


We court our own Captivity / than Thrones more great and innocent;

by heart_nouveau



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/F, Secret Relationship, Semi-Canon Compliant, Slow Build, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2017-12-12 01:20:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 61,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/805491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heart_nouveau/pseuds/heart_nouveau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <span class="small">Promises meant nothing; they were little more than pretty words, and Sansa had heard enough of them to last her a lifetime. But the way that Margaery spoke, with that strange fierceness in her voice—for a moment, Sansa could almost believe her.</span>
</p><p>Margaery and Sansa, together over the length of <i>A Storm Of Swords</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. body's sweet like sugar venom

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [this northern bloom](https://archiveofourown.org/works/494520) by [heart_nouveau](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heart_nouveau/pseuds/heart_nouveau). 



> This is a revision/expansion on an earlier work, and will follow mostly book canon. 
> 
> Title from _Friendship's Mystery- to my dearest Lucasia_ , poem by Katherine Fowler Philips ([x](http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/friendship.html)).

 

 

 

Sansa wasn’t hungry.

She had zero desire to eat, and even less appetite for the strained excuse for polite conversation the women beside her were bandying back and forth over the dinner table, smiles belonging to words that they most definitely weren’t saying. The tension in the room was so thick that Sansa could taste it.

Cersei Lannister, that fearful, beautiful Queen, presided over their table. Margaery Tyrell preened at her right, while Sansa shrank in her chair at the Queen's left.

Dutiful to a fault, Sansa had not said so much as two words since she’d been shown into the Queen’s chambers, murmuring a respectful greeting as she came in. Doing as she was bid, she’d taken her place at the royal table with the same feeling of paralyzed obligation that had washed over her upon receiving the Queen’s summons to dinner that morning.

“My grandmother and I have been discussing the wedding, and we hope to fully involve the city smallfolk in the celebration,” Margaery Tyrell was saying. She leaned toward the Queen, dress shimmering gold and green in the flickering candlelight. She was a sweet, blossoming thing; looking at her, Sansa felt as old as stone. “During the procession through the city streets, we’d like to throw flowers and have been thinking of roses, of course, as well as chrysanthemums for fidelity, gladiolus for luck...”

She had been diminished, reduced to a mote of dust in Margaery’s shadow. _She is the one that you want_ , Sansa thought towards the Queen, fiercely willing herself invisible. _Feast on_ her _, my replacement, and let me be_. The page had been turned on her own story, and all Sansa wanted was to be forgotten. Yet she’d been called here for some unknown reason, to bear witness to this exchange between queen and queen-to-be.

“Oh yes,” Cersei Lannister said, a single muscle pulsing in her jaw. She looked toward Sansa. “Don’t you think that sounds _lovely_ , Sansa? Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Yes, your Grace,” Sansa murmured, lowering her head in feigned demureness. Really, her stomach twisted like a knife, and she couldn’t stand to meet the Queen’s raking eyes. Across the table, Margaery Tyrell beamed at Sansa with a smile spread as thick as honey, as if Sansa’s response meant all the world to her.

 _This is ridiculous_ , Sansa thought with a sharp, sick, indignant thrill. _They act as if I had anything to contribute, as if I were their equal. As if I were important_.

Trying to avoid further attention, Sansa reached for her glass, reflecting on the tiny drama playing out before her. Here was Cersei, fingers tightly gripping the clawed hand rest of her chair—but why was she so angry? She, after all, had been the one who’d summoned Sansa and Margaery to dine.

Then again, the Queen had been unfathomable to Sansa since she’d stopped playing the sweet mother-to-be. When Sansa had first met the Queen at Winterfell a thousand years ago, when the Queen’s dead husband had come to make Sansa’s dead father Hand, Cersei had seemed gentle and fair. She remained beautiful, that was true. But behind that hard, lovely exterior was a woman whose love reached only to her own children. Sansa had come to dread the Queen even more since the betrothal to Joffrey had been broken; before, at least, she’d known what Cersei ultimately intended for her. Now... well. The Queen had taken to looking at Sansa as if she were something fragile just waiting to be broken, and spoke to her with in a way that alternated between cosseting, pity, and bare scorn. Her presence made Sansa almost unbearably nervous.

And here, across the table, was another confusing puzzle of a woman. Sansa had only known Margaery a matter of days, but it was already clear that the Tyrell girl was perceptive, sharp, and capable of a poignant kindness that showed itself like shards of shimmering glass. The girl and her family, while perfectly genteel to the rest of the court, had been notably warm to Sansa. But rather than providing comfort, Margaery’s sweet disposition only increased Sansa’s anxiety: she wouldn’t wish her former betrothed on anyone, especially not a girl who seemed so kind.

She'd even risked everything and told Margaery and her grandmother the violent, horrible truth about Joffrey—but Margaery and her family were still going forward with the wedding. Sansa couldn’t understand it.

“Little dove, your appetite is that of a bird this evening. Does my table not agree with you?”

Cersei’s voice startled Sansa out of her thoughts. “I-It does, your Grace.” Sansa swallowed. “I’m only feeling a bit... indisposed. I will gladly partake, if it please you.” She forced herself to look at the Queen.

The Queen’s sharp green eyes regarded Sansa for a moment. “No. We have dined long enough, I think. Let us retire to the balcony.”

Margaery Tyrell leaned in warmly. “An excellent idea, your Grace.” Cersei eyed her sharply and then rose to her feet, scarlet skirts falling gracefully to the floor. The girls trailed her into the next room, which was softly illuminated by dozens of candlelit sconces.

Cersei Lannister's bedchamber, Sansa thought, was as exquisite as that of any storybook queen. A beautiful four-poster bed dominated the center of the room on a dais, its embroidered cloth-of-gold bedding complementing the tapestry of Lannister colors that covered the wall behind. The lush Myrish rug carpeting the floor ran right up to the short stone balcony, where doors opened high over the castle gardens to display the inky sky night alight with thousands of stars. King’s Landing felt beautiful tonight, the summer night air was balmy, and the pretty scene was almost enough to allay the nerves that jangled in Sansa's chest. Almost. 

Cersei motioned for them to sit, nodding at the low carved stools just inside the room. She moved to the sideboard to unstop a decanter of wine, then surprised Sansa by turning to press a filled glass into Sansa's hands. “Here, little dove. Perhaps this will cure what ails you.” Her tone was pointed, but much softer than what Sansa had become accustomed to, from her. The Queen’s eyes were probing as she pulled away.

“Th-thank you, your Grace.” Gods, there had been a time when Sansa had prided herself on being well-spoken. She flushed.

Margaery turned to the Queen, still smiling. “The smell of the flowers is so divine, Your Grace. It reminds me of Highgarden.”

“King’s Landing is a city of many charms, Margaery.” Cersei continued to occupy herself at the sideboard. “What do you think, little dove?” she said abruptly to Sansa, who'd just been thinking she’d be hard pressed to name a single one of the city’s charms. She blinked and the Queen said sharply, “The wine.”

 _Oh._ She took a sip. “It’s very good, Your Grace.” Sansa was being truthful. The wine was indeed very good; perhaps that was why the Queen was always in her cups.

Cersei laughed, looking genuinely amused for the first time that evening. “So you prefer drink to food. A girl after my own heart.”

Margaery followed this little exchange with a courtier’s smile. “King’s Landing is truly beautiful,” she remarked, folding her hands in her lap and steering the conversation back to the earlier topic. “When you were wed, Your Grace, how long was it before you felt at home here?”

“It was very little time at all. I grew comfortable in King’s Landing very quickly. Of course, I had my brother Jaime here with me, serving in the Kingsguard, and that made me feel quite... comfortable.” Cersei paused briefly, biting her full lower lip almost wryly. “But let us speak of your wedding, Margaery. If it please you, you may choose Joffrey’s bridal flower from the castle gardens.”

“Nothing would please me more,” Margaery agreed, all sweetness, and turned her head to Sansa. “Perhaps Lady Sansa could aid in my decision.” Surprised to be acknowledged, Sansa murmured some vague noises of assent, though she privately thought the only flower Joffrey deserved was deadly nightshade or the like.

Cersei sank into a low chair on the stone balcony, stretching in her seat. “Well. As Joffrey’s queen, Margaery, you will have many duties to complete. Namely, you must give him heirs.”

Sansa could see Margaery nodding in prim understanding out of the corner of her eye. Cersei’s elegant fingers tapped at the stem of her goblet as she regarded Margaery over its rim. “My Joffrey is young still, yet becoming a man. To give him heirs, you must know what to do.” Cersei paused, her lips curling. “What do you know of fucking?”

 

Sansa couldn’t hold back her sharp inhale of shock, or stop the blush of heat that suffused her body instantly. Next to her Margaery sat unnaturally still, both eyes trained on the Queen. “What do you mean, Your Grace?” the Tyrell girl said, very coolly.

“I mean _fucking_.” Cersei could very well have been saying ‘dancing’ or ‘talking’ in that cavalier tone of voice, but for that unmistakable hint of wicked amusement—enjoyment, even—in her eyes. “What do you know of it, my lady of Highgarden?”

There was a long, weighted pause. Margaery’s voice, when it came, was as light as Cersei’s but steely underneath. “I am a maiden, Your Grace. To be any other, as the betrothed of King Joffrey, would be... unthinkable.” _As well you know_ , her tone added.

Sansa’s face burned. Was  _this_ was why the Queen had called an audience with two young women she so obviously despised? She glanced at Margaery, who remained gazing stoically at the Queen.

Cersei laughed suddenly, brightly. “Margaery, my sweet, I’m casting no aspersions on your _maidenhead_. Gods! I’m simply asking what you know of... well, fucking. Lovemaking, if your tender sensibilities prefer. The art of how a queen may please her king.” She gave a brilliant, rigid smile. “It is important that you know these things to make heirs. Joffrey may need you to be experienced.”

Margaery released her breath with a noise that sounded like it might have been the prelude to laughter, but she did not laugh. “I see, your Grace.” Her blue eyes narrowed for a second before widening innocuously. “Why, I know as little as any maiden would.”

“So you will need instruction.” Cersei leaned forward, her loose golden hair gleaming in the candlelight. “Don’t be _ashamed_ , Margaery. I wouldn’t want my son marrying some whore.” She smiled broadly, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “You’ll learn from me. I will teach you how to fuck like a queen.”

Sansa gaped at her, thunderstruck. She couldn’t help it. It was the combination of the obscene word she’d only ever heard used by stable hands (and Theon Greyjoy, once, when he didn’t know she was listening), and the frank discussion of what constituted heir-making. Sansa had never heard ladies speak of such things. But then again… who was she to know? Perhaps this was part of the marriage contract. Maybe, if she were still betrothed to Joffrey, Cersei would be inquiring about _her_ lovemaking (fucking?) expertise right now. The thought was enough to make Sansa squirm with embarrassment, adding to the color already high in her cheeks.

Cersei reached to refill their cups and Margaery sipped her wine placidly. Her expression was perfectly calm, rosebud mouth turned up at the corners, and she kept her eyes on the Queen. Cersei drank, cleared her throat, and smirked. Her gaze swung from Margaery to Sansa, and then back to Margaery. “So. _Fucking—_ or would you prefer if I said lovemaking?”

“Your word will suit,” said Margaery levelly. “Your Grace.”

The Queen smiled. “Fucking,” she said, “should not be all about the man’s pleasure. The woman’s pleasure is also important. If you know how to please yourself, you will have a much better chance of pleasing the man.” Cersei’s mouth twisted slightly, until her smile looked almost ugly. “Men think they have all the control, but in the bedchamber... it’s all in our hands. All men fancy themselves great lovers but, you know, they have such fragile egos. We can build them up or destroy them merely by expressing displeasure with their performance. Besides, it’s up to us to give them heirs. A man may spill his seed wherever he can stick his cock, but it takes a woman’s body, a woman’s choice, to bear a child.”

Margaery’s eyes sized up the Queen. “What are you saying, Your Grace?”

Cersei spoke deliberately. “Men control everything in this world. And so, in every other aspect of this world, we need them. But not in the bedchamber. There, they need _us—_ to make heirs, to give them their pleasure—but we don’t need _them_. We can use them for our own pleasure, but we do not need them to achieve it. Only once you know that can you truly fuck like a queen.” She looked at Margaery, almost coldly. “And don’t you want to be Queen?”

Margaery’s steely reserve melted just a little. “Yes,” she said softly. "I do." Sansa could hear the edge of real desire there in the older girl’s voice, and it made her uneasy.

A hard, foreign look came over the Queen’s face then. She leaned back in her chair as though it were a throne. “Then you’ll do as you’re told,” she replied. “Kiss Sansa.”

 

 

The room lurched. Sansa thought the situation had changed, that she’d become a mere witness to this exchange between two would-be Queens, yet clearly she was wrong. _Why this_ , she thought wildly, _what does Cersei want from me?_ It _had_ to be some kind of test—but why? To test Sansa’s loyalty to the crown? To prove, as she did every day with her oaths and shows of obedience, that she was not the blood traitor her Stark name automatically implied? Or was this merely the natural progression of her responsibilities as Cersei’s ward?

Her heart pulsing hot and hard in her chest, she looked to Margaery and the Tyrell girl, whose mouth had fallen into a perfect O at the Queen’s order, seemed to read the fear written on Sansa's face. “Your Grace,” Margaery interjected swiftly, her voice very smooth, “I don’t see what that has to do with making heirs.”

Cersei wore an expression of amusement laced with exasperation. “Kiss her, Margaery. A Queen should take what she wants, when she wants it.” Her tone changed abruptly, growing icy as she leaned closer. “And you _do_ want her, don’t you, Margaery? I’ve heard the young flowers are lovely in Highgarden... and surely this northern bloom is just as fair. So go on.”

Sansa had never before seen Margaery lose her composure, but the Queen’s words had that effect. Margaery turned her face quickly away from Cersei’s gaze, mouth tightening sharply, as a high blush rose in her cheeks and a strange hesitancy washed over her face. She turned to Sansa.

As Margaery looked slowly at her, it startled Sansa to see the subtle change that unfurled over the older girl’s face, eyes tracing Sansa’s figure in its ice blue gown almost hungrily. _The Queen is right_ , she realized with a tiny, hot shock: Margaery did want her. When Margaery’s eyes finally met her own, though, their look was questioning. Margaery was asking, Sansa saw suddenly, for her consent. She wanted to make sure this was all right.

But Sansa didn’t even know if her consent was hers to give. She turned to the Queen and saw the hard, lustful look in Cersei’s eyes—yet exactly _what_ the Queen was lusting for was impossible to tell. She turned away quickly, heart pounding. If this was a test, and Sansa had no doubt that it was, she had no idea what was expected of her. She had only ever kissed Joffrey, and chastely. What did the Queen want here?—was she to pleasure Margaery, or Margaery her?—was this a punishment or a reward? And again, what this all had to do with heir-making was beyond her.

It struck her then that, just like everything Cersei Lannister had ever bidden her to do, this task was completely beyond her comprehension. It was thoroughly beyond Sansa to understand what went on in that blonde Lannister head. Unbidden, a laugh bubbled up in her chest, and she let out a tiny, hysterical hiccup of air before she could help it, pressing a hand over her smile half a second too late.

Relief washed over Margaery’s face like a wave. She reached for Sansa’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze, and Sansa thought, between deep draws of breath, _Everything will be fine._ Just as Margaery had been kind to her before, so she would be now. Margaery pressed Sansa’s fingers to her lips, leaving a kiss there.

“What a _gentlemanly_ queen you are, Margaery.” Cersei’s acid voice caused Sansa to jerk in surprise, stomach instantly knotting with nerves, and she saw Margaery’s mouth tighten again. Sansa couldn’t help but reflexively turn to look at the Queen, but Margaery put a hand under Sansa's chin and gently made Sansa look at her, blue eyes very firm. “Just look at me,” she whispered, so softly that Sansa was barely sure she’d heard it. But she obeyed. Wordlessly then, Margaery turned Sansa’s hand over, pressing a kiss to her palm. Her eyes stayed trained on Sansa’s as she left a kiss on her wrist, and another farther up Sansa's arm.

 _I don’t have to fear Cersei_ , Sansa told herself, tried to convince herself, as Margaery’s hand slipped lightly around her waist. _Margaery won’t let anything happen to me_ , as her blue eyes grew closer, fixed on Sansa’s. _Don’t think_. Then Margaery’s soft lips pressed gently against her own, and the warmth of it made the world go black.

Sansa blinked her eyes open, not even realizing that she’d closed them. Margaery pulled back for a moment, looking intently into Sansa’s eyes, hands pulled away and hovering in her lap. _So that’s what it feels like to do that_ , Sansa thought slowly, body struck through with wonder. It took everything she had not to turn to look at Cersei, a leonine golden figure in the corner of her vision. Margaery was looking at Sansa with a question in her eyes and Sansa took a deep, slow breath, letting herself think only of how she wanted to feel Margaery’s lips again. So she squeezed the other girl’s hand, hardly daring to nod yes, but that was all it took for Margaery to smile and exhale and carefully kiss her again.

She’d never felt anything like this, this goldenness flooding her body all over, not just where she and Margaery met lips. It spread, tingling, through her belly and ignited the strangest warmth in that secret place between her legs. Tentative, Sansa put her hands around Margaery’s waist, shyness and uncertainty stopping her from pressing into the older girl’s embrace the way she wanted to. Instead she reached up to gently tangle her fingers in the other girl’s soft loose curls, and sighed at the feeling, breathing out one long exhale of delicious need—and suddenly the kiss turned wet and hot, Margaery’s tongue in her mouth and hands very tight around Sansa’s waist. Margaery gently pulled Sansa’s lower lip between her teeth before kissing her again, and again, over and _over_ , each kiss melting into the one before.

She realized she was panting, gasping into Margaery’s mouth, making low desperate sounds that were only partially swallowed up by their hot open-mouthed kisses. She wanted _more_ , the queer ache between her legs spreading and flaring—and all of a sudden they’d kicked away their stools and were on the floor, Sansa on her back and Margaery awkwardly straddling her hips, their skirts unwieldy and everywhere. Margaery sat up for a minute with a little pant for breath, hitching up her green gown to sit astride one of Sansa’s legs, left knee pushing dangerously close to the aching juncture of Sansa’s thighs.

 _She’s lovely_ , Sansa thought suddenly, gazing up at Margaery’s heart-shaped face, so flushed and set in its look of determination. How often had Sansa daydreamed (ambiguously, to be sure) of going to bed with some handsome knight? Yet warm, beautiful Margaery, whose hand now crept under Sansa's skirt—somehow, she felt just as nice as any knight Sansa had ever imagined.

Margaery leaned down to meet her lips. Sansa sighed in wordless pleasure at their kiss, dazed by the strength of her hunger for something she’d never known she could want. But Margaery’s heated mouth was gone all too soon, and Sansa’s sharp gasp of protest cut off a split second later when she felt the other girl pressing a kiss to her throat, and another, and another. She arched her back in delight as the kisses grew wet, and sucked in her breath at the perception of teeth and pressure, Margaery sucking little bites into her skin. A flock of butterflies exploded in her stomach, fluttering madly, as the bites moved down over her collarbone and then—suddenly—Margaery was kissing the tops of her breasts, pushed up over the tight bodice of her gown and all Sansa could think was _Oh, yes_ , and she was pushing her crotch against Margaery’s leg because she was aching so badly, so sweetly, and it was almost too much.

“Yes... yes,” she panted, stroking Margaery’s soft head, watching as Margaery’s deft fingers worked at the fastenings of her gown. The Tyrell girl looked up at Sansa and smiled, and when she had gotten the bindings loose enough Sansa herself pulled at her bodice, laying herself open. Margaery paused then, regarding Sansa with her clear blue eyes, and Sansa stared back with a dart of trepidation, chest heaving. _It's all right_ , she thought, trembling, _she's not going to hurt me, she..._  Not breaking their mutual gaze, her face very serious, Margaery entwined her fingers in Sansa’s and stretched Sansa’s arm high above her head onto the lush carpeted floor. The fingers of Margaery's other hand traced a lazy circle on Sansa’s breast, drawing down the top of the silk shift with agonizing slowness until Sansa’s right breast was exposed to the balmy night air. Painfully slowly, the older girl ran her thumb over Sansa’s nipple. When it hardened to her touch Margaery looked up at Sansa with something like pleased amusement in her eyes, and she didn't bother to hide her smile at the way Sansa's desperate sighs increased when she did it again, and again.

So when Margaery leaned down and Sansa felt the ferocious wet bite of Margaery’s tongue and teeth at her breast, Sansa began to thrash uncontrollably. Her world narrowed into a golden bubble, arching her neck, rolling her hips against Margaery’s leg between her thighs. She was barely conscious of the sounds she made as Margaery suckled and nipped at her, but— _oh—_ she had never even known her body could feel this way.

And suddenly she felt, between her legs, Margaery’s hand, stroking at the place that only Sansa had ever touched. Instantly she felt herself becoming wet, and it was into this secret silky hot wet place that Margaery slid one exploratory finger. Sansa tensed instinctively, expecting pain, but there was none. She felt her inner walls tighten around Margaery, who lifted her mouth from Sansa’s breast with an involuntary groan, eyes gone nearly black with desire. She leaned up quickly and kissed Sansa’s open mouth, whispering hotly, “You sweet girl, you're so young, you—”

Not wanting to hear words, Sansa wrapped both hands in Margaery’s hair and pulled the older girl fiercely to her. She may have only just learned to kiss but she knew what she wanted, and thrilled at hearing Margaery’s helpless sounds as she ventured her own tongue into her mouth. All too soon Margaery drew back, nudged her nose against Sansa’s and kissed a burning path down Sansa’s neck, chest, moving over the tangle of unlaced corset and skirts at Sansa's waist. She pushed up Sansa’s skirts, lacing their fingers together so tightly it hurt—and when Sansa felt Margaery kiss her there, between her legs, she screamed.

In blind, frantic pleasure, she rolled her hips helplessly up into the irresistible sweetness that was Margaery’s mouth on her. With her eyes closed, the whole world was Margaery’s lapping tongue at her aching center, finger crooked wickedly inside Sansa. Margaery added another finger and Sansa pulled her closer, hands twining in brown curls, hips undulating against the wet strokes of motion, again and again and _again_ and…

Margaery’s thumb stroked the front of her and Sansa’s back arched; wordlessly she cried out and collapsed against the floor, shuddering, spent. Margaery drew away for a moment before lowering her head to lick Sansa clean with a few long strokes of her tongue, leaving a few well-placed kisses that reduced Sansa to trembling shivers. Without releasing Sansa’s hand Margaery drew up, supporting herself on one elbow, and kissed Sansa hard. Her lovely curls were messy in disarray, but her eyes shone. Not thinking, Sansa opened her mouth and it was a moment before she realized, slightly shocked, that it was _herself_ that she was tasting on Margaery’s tongue. She rolled onto her side and took Margaery’s head between her hands, and they kissed for a long minute. Finally, too exhausted to continue, Sansa rolled onto her back; Margaery laid her head between Sansa’s head and shoulder and her arm across Sansa’s waist, gently pinning her to the ground and they rested, breathing heavily.

 

 

There was a small sound of clapping, and Sansa's eyes flew open with a jolt. She had forgotten completely about the Queen. Too exhausted for fear or even nerves, she stayed where she was, partially nude with her clothing all in disarray. Margaery had her arm around Sansa and,  _besides_ , Sansa thought almost darkly, _after what Cersei Lannister has just seen, there is no way she can claim dissatisfaction_.

“Well done, my young Queen-to-be,” Cersei approved, settling back in her chair. She looked satisfied, in her way. Margaery slowly sat up, smoothing her dress. “And how was that?”

“It was... well, Your Grace,” murmured Margaery, so demure now, but unable to hide the fact she was still breathless from their coupling. Sansa hastily pulled her shift up over her breasts and skirts down over her knees; she felt positively indecent as she sat up, trying to right herself. Margaery looked at her quickly, avoiding the Queen’s eyes as she turned to help Sansa lace up her gown. “It was very well.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Cersei said baldly. “Of course it is different with a man. And remember... I said nothing about fucking like a king. It’s one thing to give pleasure to a king when he wants it,” and she drained her glass, “and quite another to do anything but lie there when all he wants is a cunt to fuck, and cares not if it’s wet or dry or even attached to his own queen.” She dropped her glass to the ground. “So you see, Margaery, it’s not all fun and games and our sweet Sansa here.”

The bitterness in the Queen’s voice was heavy and hard. Sansa stared at Cersei’s face, shadowed in the candlelight. The Queen had never looked so old.

“Your Grace,” Margaery said, her head bowed.

“That’s enough from you, you little slut.” But Cersei’s words sounded hollow as she gazed off across the balcony, drawn into herself. “Sansa, fetch me another glass.”

Sansa scrambled to her feet and did as she was bid. The Queen accepted it without looking at her, and Sansa stepped back to stand alongside Margaery, waiting for their dismissal. Sansa’s nervousness had returned, coiling in her stomach like a snake, but she knew that reprieve was imminent.

And finally Cersei sighed, glaring at the two of them. “Well, you may go. I hope you’ve both learned something tonight.” She turned away and settled darkly into her chair, hands locked around her goblet.

Margaery dropped into a graceful curtsy. “Yes, Your Grace.” Monumentally relieved and still dizzy with release, Sansa did the same, and as they turned away Margaery caught Sansa’s eye with a dazed, wide-eyed smile. They left the Queen alone behind them.

 

 

 

Outside the Queen’s chambers, the Tyrell girl wheeled around to face Sansa, mouth falling open in delighted shock as if they had just gotten away with something very daring indeed. She grabbed Sansa’s hands and spun her about, laughing gaily, her tone touched with the hysterical recklessness that Sansa felt herself. Sansa laughed too. If she didn’t, she feared she might burst into the worst kind of tears, the kind where you couldn’t tell which emotion was causing you to well up, only that it was entirely overwhelming.

Margaery pulled Sansa close as she swung near. “Come to my chambers, spend the night with me?” Sansa heard her say, eyes all fiery and blue, words emanating from her lips with heat that had been stoked by their unanticipated encounter, set in motion by the Queen’s whim.

It all felt so surreal. Sansa pressed her lips together, nodding, nodding as if she were in a dream.

 

 

 

Through the sleeping belly of the Red Keep, they made their way to the Maidenvault. Sansa lowered her head as they swept past the Tyrell guards in their green and gold livery, standing at attention like statues, but Margaery passed them with no more than a little laugh.

They crossed a long hall and darkened antechamber that must have been the Tyrells’ receiving room, before ascending a tower. There Margaery pushed open a wide wooden door to chambers that were spacious and airy, all ivory white walls and sloping windows open to the night air. 

“Here,” the older girl said breathlessly, pulling Sansa to the creamy white bed before Sansa had a chance to truly look around. Canopied like the queen’s, the bed was dressed in bolts of silk shaded from milky ivory to the palest opalescent green. Margaery pressed Sansa down into a sitting position, squeezing their hands together once before she pulled away. “Stay there,” she directed with a radiant, impatient smile, and as she crossed the room Sansa folded her hands in her lap, still dazed from their whirlwind passage through the castle—not to mention everything that had come before.

She realized, quite suddenly, that this was the first time she’d ever been alone with Margaery Tyrell.

Time passed almost blurrily, moments elapsing in time to Sansa's ragged heart. Sansa had assumed Margaery had crossed to the wall opposite to light the sconces there. But when the Tyrell girl turned, Sansa saw with a start she had unlaced the front of her jade green gown, and now stepped out of it. She wore no smallclothes, and when the diaphanous fabric of her dress pooled at her feet the older girl stepped forward completely nude, as natural as anything.

It was then, in this beautiful room with soft nocturnal light streaming in, that Sansa began to feel stabs of panic. Margaery approached in slow steps, moonlight luminous on her skin and hair flowing over her high small breasts; her heart-shaped face was anticipatory, almost glowing.

It was strange, how this girl who had just touched her so intimately remained almost a complete stranger. _It’s as though she knows me from the inside out_ , Sansa thought faintly, _but there’s only so much I can give_.

Margaery stepped closer, her smile sweet and expectant, but it was all too much. When she laid a soft hand against Sansa’s arm, Sansa flinched away.

Her eyes darted up reflexively. There was a strange, cautious look on Margaery's face as she gently removed her hand, holding it against one hip. “I’m sorry, my lady,” she apologized. “Is there anything—did I—”

“I would like to go back to my chambers,” Sansa said, chest aching and constricted. She pulled her skirts to her and rose from the bed, evading Margaery as the other girl stood there, arms held uncertainly at her sides. As she moved to the door, Sansa could feel Margaery’s bewildered eyes at her back.

She paused at the entrance to the bedchamber, knowing that it was discourteous to run out but utterly lost for what she might say. _Thank you, this evening has been a true... pleasure?_

“Good night, Lady Margaery,” was all she could finally manage, evading Margaery's eyes completely.

And then she ran.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from _Radio_ by Lana del Rey ([x](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFjqZpZZ5jI)).
> 
>  
> 
> _Edited 8/18/14._


	2. As innocent as our design

  

The next summons that came for Sansa bore the Tyrell rose in place of the Lannisters' golden lion rampant.

She ran her finger over the whorls of green sealing wax, nervous and expectant. Taking great care not to break the sigil’s stamp, Sansa opened the message with a cutlery knife from the breakfast table and read the missive quickly, her eyes darting across the contents of the page.

“My lady?” asked the Tyrell page who hovered, deferential, by the door of Sansa’s chambers, and Sansa looked up with a start. “Might I bring the lady Margaery your response?” 

  
 

 

She took the letter to the godswood and paced, lost in thought, beneath the curving shelter of the trees.

 _Will she be angry with me? What could she possibly have to say?_ Sansa cringed hotly every time she remembered how she’d just run out, leaving Margaery standing there speechless behind her. _It was so rude, and unladylike..._ But it wasn’t entirely her fault, not really. Her septa had never told her what a lady ought to do when another lady disrobed amorously in front of her.

Sansa was beginning to realize that there was a good deal her septa had never told her. She tightened her fist around the parchment, crumpling it slightly, and held it to her breast.

Looking around at the shaded trees, she wondered distractedly if her Jonquil might appear. Ser Dontos did not often come to the godswood during the day, however. She had not seen her drunken knight for half a week, and their tentative plans had been wiped clean from her head by the strange contents of her night with Margaery and the Queen. Gods knew what he would make of all that had happened to her since they’d last met.

Sansa paused under the great heart tree, leaning her cheek against its cool white bark and closing her eyes. Why was she agonizing over this? It wasn’t as if she had any choice in the matter. She had sent her prompt, polite response with the Tyrell page. Yes, of course she would like to join Lady Margaery for lunch in the gardens the next day. Nothing would please her more.

She did not want to go; in truth, she was petrified. But a lady would go, to make amends. _And I can little afford to make an enemy of anyone._ Sansa knew that there was only one answer she could have given, in the end.  
  
 

 

 

Sansa hadn’t expected her heart to jump the way it did when she saw Margaery, resplendent like a little queen in her arbor. She hadn’t expected that. She hung back for the slightest moment, lost for words—but Joffrey’s betrothed came smilingly forth, kissed her cheek, and took her hands so unconcernedly that Sansa might have been any court lady at all.

They exchanged pleasantries first, skimming over the weather, court life, a certain upcoming day of religious festivities. Margaery seemed determined to keep the conversation easy, flowing, and (apparently) as shallow as a puddle. She was quite animated, hardly ever still for a moment; her hands gestured when she spoke, or smoothed the tablecloth as she listened.

 _Maybe, just maybe_ , Sansa thought, _she is nervous too_. She couldn’t tell if the thought calmed or agitated her.

At last, lulled by the innocuous sweet patter of Margaery’s conversation, Sansa relaxed just a little. She was being polite, so polite; would it be so terrible if she said the one thing she was dying to say? _Just ask. You have to._

She waited until Margaery had finished some commentary on the latest fashions before venturing, “Lady Margaery, may I ask you something?” She felt almost sick, but thought she might explode if she didn’t say it.

“Speak freely, my lady,” the Tyrell girl said lightly. But a shadow crossed her face quickly like a hairline crack, like something hinting at the effort it took to keep up that easy, airy façade. This, then, Sansa realized, was the dark uncertainty that all Margaery’s animation had been trying to conceal.

“The other night... with the Queen,” Sansa began, painfully circumspect. “She..."

“Yes, she’s a wicked old bitch, isn’t she?” Margaery said abruptly, shifting in her seat.

Sansa choked. “You Tyrells speak so... so freely.”

Margaery raised an eyebrow. “Only when we're certain we're in like-minded company. You have no love for the Queen, do you, Sansa?”

Sansa pressed her lips together and shook her head. It was difficult to say what came next. “I... don’t understand what she wanted,” Sansa said slowly, and then corrected herself. “Wants.”

“Yes,” Margaery mused in a flat voice, “that little spectacle in her chambers. Well. I daresay she intended to humiliate the both of us.” There was a heavy pause, her words burning up the air between them. Sansa struggled for breath.

“I’m very sorry that things had to happen the way they did,” Margaery said at last, her tone growing gentler. She leaned toward Sansa. “It must have been very surprising for you, and quite... quite shocking.”

She couldn’t think of the proper words to say, or how to even open her mouth to say them. She dropped her head, face hot. “Yes. Yes, it was. But...”

Margaery dipped her head, trying to follow Sansa’s eyes. “But?”

Sansa looked up, torturing her lower lip with her teeth. Her expression said everything.

“But you enjoyed it,” Margaery finished, understanding.

Hearing it put so plainly, Sansa was lost. _What am I supposed to say?_ There were so many responses to that simple statement, and she had no idea which she should, or could, give. She twisted her hands in her lap, the corners of her vision beginning to blur wetly together.

“Sansa, look at me, please.” Margaery’s cool fingers slipped under Sansa’s chin, making Sansa look at her. “You don’t have to be ashamed,” she said firmly, her blue eyes steady. “What we did—that is what bodies are made for. There’s no need to feel guilty about feeling pleasure.”

“I—” Sansa faltered. “It’s only that... I never...” She hesitated desperately, heart constricted in her chest. How was she supposed to tell this girl that she felt not only shame, but fear?

“You’ve never done that before?” Margaery said slowly. “With anyone?” At Sansa’s tiny nod, she sucked in her breath. It was a moment before she readjusted her expression, lifting her head to look evenly at Sansa. “Then... I’m glad it was pleasant for you. And I’m honored,” she added, with a silly, flirtatious smile. Sansa gave a miserable little laugh at that, wiping at the tears that had finally spilled over. Telling the truth hardly made her feel any less wretched. She was still confused about the older girl’s reaction, her intentions—and what all of this meant, could possibly mean.

“Here. No need for any of that, sweet girl.” Margaery smoothed away a tear with her thumb. She moved back to her chair, thoughtfully arranging her skirts as she settled back into the seat. Sansa dried her eyes with one sleeve and watched, sniffling through the last of her tears.

“Sansa,” the Tyrell girl said after a mild pause, “I have three brothers. One, Garlan, is here at court. The youngest, Loras, you know well. But I have a third brother, who remains at Highgarden. His name is Willas.”

Sansa took a deep breath, uncertain how this related to their previous topic of conversation. “My lady?”

“As heir to Highgarden,” Margaery went on, her voice gentle, “Willas is in need of a wife, and I think he would count himself immeasurably lucky to have one as lovely as you. Do you think you could consent to this match?”

 _Truly?_ Sansa gazed at her in open shock. “I—”

Margaery spoke earnestly, the sun at her back obscuring her face with its hazy glow. “Willas has a kind heart, my dear. He is gentle and good, and I know you would be happy with him.”

Though she paused, Sansa knew once again, truer than she knew anything, that there was only one answer she could give. She nodded, head spinning. “I— Yes. Yes, I consent.”

The older girl’s smile widened with undeniable satisfaction. “How wonderful.” She reached forward to clasp Sansa’s hands, her features growing more distinct as she leaned out of the golden stain of sunlight. “As Willas' betrothed, you will come under my family’s protection. You’ll spend time in our court here in King’s Landing, to learn what life is like at Highgarden.”

“Oh, that—that does sound wonderful,” Sansa said softly, listening, waiting. Waiting.

And here it was: the vein leading to the heart of the matter. “As sisters,” said Margaery, “you and I would be able to spend much more time together. You could even stay some nights with me in my chambers, if you would like.”

Sansa took a shallow breath. Margaery hazarded one look at Sansa’s face and started running on as mindlessly as she had at the start of their conversation. “My cousins often do that; after having a bed companion for so long it’s become so difficult to sleep alone. We ladies certainly are spoiled for companionship, don’t you think?”

This made Sansa suddenly wistful, thinking of how she and Jeyne Poole had stayed up every night together when they’d first come to King’s Landing, whispering excitedly about everything they had seen and learned and done that day. Everything about the capitol had seemed so magical then.

 _But._ “And... what happened with the Queen?” Sansa heard herself say in a thin little voice. “Would that be part of this?”

Margaery grew still, her voice carefully neutral. “Would you like it to be?”

Fear and interest seized Sansa’s heart all at once. She felt hot, and then cold. “I don’t know,” she said at last, voice small in its honesty.

Margaery’s expression flickered for a moment, and she nodded slowly. “All right,” she said. “Then we’ll just have to see.”

What that meant, Sansa didn’t know. But the subject was apparently decided, as Margaery picked up her glass with a wide, polished smile and reached to pour the two of them more wine. “Very well,” she said gaily, tone changing, “it’s settled. You may dine tonight with my family, if it please you.”

This, Sansa knew she could not refuse. _Another queen giving me orders_ , she thought, tense with anticipation. She looked down at her hands. “Thank you,” she murmured, “I would be honored.”

They finished dining in relative quiet and when they had done, Margaery escorted Sansa to the edge of the pavilion. “I’ll send an escort for you this evening, just before sundown,” she said courteously, smiling as always. “Goodbye, sister.”

Sansa blushed to hear this new, unfamiliar endearment. “Until this evening,” she said, with a curtsy. She kissed Margaery’s cheek, heart pounding at the innocent contact, and turned away.

“Oh, and lady Sansa?” Margaery said behind her. Sansa turned, her timid words dying on her lips when she saw the burning look on Margaery’s face.

The older girl’s words were as edged as a naked blade. “I promise you, Cersei Lannister will never force you to do something against your will. Ever again.”

Something caught in Sansa’s throat, and she did not know how to answer.

“I promise,” Margaery repeated, firmly.

Promises meant nothing; they were little more than pretty words, and Sansa had heard enough of them to last her a lifetime. But the way that Margaery spoke, with that strange fierceness in her voice—for a moment, Sansa could almost believe her. And so, for one fatal, bated-breath moment, she almost did.

  

 

 

“Willas will be very lucky indeed, child.” The Queen of Thorns’ breath was sour, but the close way she looked at Sansa was kindly enough. She patted Sansa’s arm with her wizened little hand. Across the table, Sansa saw Margaery tilting her head in approval.

The family dinner had turned out to be a full Tyrell court affair. The Maidenvault clanged with the sound of plates and cutlery, abuzz with fleet-footed servingmen, music, movement, and laughter. Sansa’s head spun trying to keep track of all the many cousins, uncles, aunts, lords, ladies, and retainers who came up to introduce themselves, welcoming her to their southron court. Apart from Margaery’s grandmother, no one _said_ anything about her engagement, but the warm manner in which she was received made Sansa feel full and happy.

She noticed, too, that many of the husbands and wives seemed remarkably happy together. They were affectionate with one another, warm, and loving; Margaery’s brother Garlan (strapping and handsome, with a great russet beard) held hands with his pretty wife between courses, and another lord whose name Sansa hadn’t caught kissed his wife’s cheek and whispered laughingly in her ear. _Perhaps that is the way of Highgarden and the South_ , she thought yearningly, and her spirits lifted. If Willas were anything like these lords who doted on their wives with kind eyes, she should not want for happiness in her marriage. It took so little, after all, to be happy. A kind husband from a kind house would be more than enough for her.

 _A kind husband... with a singularly kind sister?_ Sansa wasn’t quite sure how Margaery fit into all this marital planning. She watched the older girl make her lively way through the throng of courtiers, laughing hysterically with a group of girls one moment, sending people up to greet Sansa the next. But Margaery did not come to sit by Sansa’s side; that distinction was served by the Queen of Thorns, who kept up a sharp running commentary as each court member presented him- or herself (and no one, it seemed, was immune to her barbed tongue), as well as the Lady Alerie, Margaery’s mother, who comported herself serenely and encouraged Sansa to try all the delicacies of their table.

It was such a whirlwind evening that Sansa was almost relieved when Margaery took her by the hand at its close, excusing the two of them with the most gracious of smiles. “I must tell my good-sister about the life she is to expect in Highgarden,” she said warmly to those who remained.

Offering her arm, Margaery escorted Sansa up the winding tower to those familiar chambers of hers. Sansa’s growing apprehension lessened slightly when she saw how different the airy rooms looked from the last time she’d come. The chambers she remembered, bone-white in the lonely illumination of the moon, were now lit by the cheerful glow of dozens of tapers and sconces, and a handful of maidservants scattered and stepped back respectfully as the two of them entered.

Smiling, Margaery swept over to the large arched doorway that led onto a curved balcony. “Won’t you join me?” she invited Sansa, half-turning. Sansa followed with a quiet step, settling onto the seat opposite as Margaery gracefully sank onto a divan, nestling her chin on her folded arms.

A maidservant came over with a tray, bearing glasses of a sweet Arbor gold. “Let’s toast,” said Margaery, sitting up. She leaned over to clink glasses with Sansa. “To your welcome to our family,” she said sweetly, and they drank. The velvety dark closed around them, cicadas filling the night with purring sound.

Margaery cleared her throat. “Lady Sansa—could I call you Sansa? And won’t you call me Margaery? It seems so formal not to, when we are to be sisters.”

“Why, yes of course,” Sansa said, dutiful. _That’s right, we are to be sisters._ It still didn’t quite seem real.

“Well, I do hope you enjoyed your introduction to our court,” the older girl rejoined with her ever-present smile.

“Yes,” Sansa agreed, matching Margaery’s light, cavalier tone, “only I don’t know how I’ll remember all of those names. I’m afraid I’ll be frightfully rude, meeting those courtiers again and struggling to remember just exactly what they’re called.”

The older girl dismissed the criticism with a smiling wave of her hand. “Everyone was so taken with you,” she said effusively. “You made quite a wonderful impression.”

Sansa warmed at the compliment. “Truly?”

“Why, yes,” Margaery smiled. “My lady mother said she couldn’t have found a lovelier, more charming match for her son if she had searched all of the Reach.”

Hands relaxing around her glass, Sansa eased into asking a few questions about Willas—was he like Garlan, or more like Loras? what were his hobbies?—and Margaery sketched a favorable portrait of her eldest brother for Sansa’s benefit. He was a gentle, distinguished man who already ruled Highgarden with a kind hand. “I must tell you: my brother was crippled in a riding accident when he was small,” she confided, her look sympathetic. “But he walks with a cane, and only has a slight limp. And though he no longer can ride, he dotes on animals of all kinds. Do you like animals, Sansa?” Sansa nodded keenly, reflecting that everything that she heard about her husband-to-be boded well. She constructed a fuller image of him with every new detail she learned, and listened with marked (very marked) single-mindedness to Margaery’s descriptions.

At length Margaery yawned prettily, covering her mouth with one hand. “Oh, excuse me—I’m terribly exhausted.” She smiled at Sansa, who involuntarily tightened her hands in her lap. “Are you ready for bed?”

 

 

With her characteristic lack of modesty, Margaery again undressed in a few fluid movements, draping her gown over the back of a chair. “I’ve a sleeping shift you could borrow, if you like,” she said easily, moving towards Sansa. Sansa swallowed, nodded, waited.

“All right,” said Margaery. She stepped before Sansa and began to unfasten the front of her gown. “I’ve dismissed my maids, so let me help you undress,” she said, very easily.

As still as Sansa tried to hold herself, she couldn’t stop herself from trembling. Moving slowly, Margaery slipped the gown off over her shoulders and focused on unlacing Sansa’s corselet, her fingers working carefully at the silk cords. Sansa watched her, stomach fluttering. She could smell traces of the other girl’s soft perfume.

Finished with her task, Margaery came higher and, looking steadily at Sansa’s mouth, trailed the pad of her thumb across Sansa’s lower lip. Sansa caught her breath with a little electric start. _We’ll just have to see_ , she remembered Margaery saying. Was that how she was to translate these exploratory caresses— _just seeing_?

Margaery moved with gentle purpose, the same way she had directed their warm conversation before: it was all connected, Sansa realized faintly, all meant to lull her into a feeling of comfort. Perhaps Margaery thought that doing this would calm Sansa as it had in the Queen’s chambers, in that brief instant before Sansa had remembered herself, who she was and where she was, and that nothing came without a cost.

“Is this all right, Sansa?” Margaery drew back suddenly, rosy lips parted, flushed from their particular attentions to the hollow of Sansa’s neck. Though her look was intent, her eyes were already dreamy and half-gone. “Does this feel good?”

And the worst part—the truth of it was—it did. Sansa despaired of herself, that she could enjoy, _wanted_ to enjoy, what they were doing. _She’s offering you protection, a home, her brother’s hand, and the shelter of her family—and her touch feels good_ , Sansa told herself. _Let her do this if she wants it so much._

_And if you want it, too._

But it felt like this kind of pleasure, its sensation, could only be followed by grief. In the mounting thrill that crossed her body, it was growing difficult to distinguish anticipation from dread. Stirring under the older girl’s soft hands, Sansa wondered for one mad second if Cersei Lannister had put Margaery up to this. Could they be in on this together? For why, really, was Margaery interested in her?—for her hand for her brother, yes—but this, what they were doing now? _Why? What can it be?_

And they were on the bed, and Margaery was pulling up Sansa’s shift, placing gentle kisses on her belly. Sansa sensed that soon she would move lower, and then—

“That’s enough, please, don’t go any further,” she blurted suddenly, panic twisting in her stomach. She drew back against the pillows, making herself very small.

Margaery paused for one blank moment, with a strange hollow look on her face—then smiled slightly, hinting of sweet resignation. She raised herself up to stretch out at Sansa’s side, keeping a careful distance. “All right, sweetling,” she said mildly, and reached a hand to tenderly stroke Sansa’s trembling shoulder. Sansa let her.

“Would you like to go to sleep now?” Margaery said, very soft. Sansa nodded mutely.

As the older girl gently folded her in her arms, Sansa closed her eyes tight, willing her mind to clear. “Don’t be afraid, sweetling,” she heard Margaery murmur, as she smoothed Sansa’s hair. “I shan’t hurt you. I swear it.”

And it wasn’t that Sansa didn’t want to believe her. She only knew that she couldn’t.

Margaery’s breathing evened out at her back long before Sansa herself was able to drift off to sleep.

 

 

 

When Sansa woke the next morning with sunlight bright on her face, the night’s events seeming like little more than a hazy dream.

From the breakfast table on the balcony, Margaery regarded her warmly over a piece of blood orange. “Good morning, my lady. Did you sleep well?”

Sansa sat up in the unfamiliar bed, smoothing one hand over her mussed hair. “Yes, thank you,” she said politely, feeling slightly out of sorts. She looked around her. Maids buzzed around them, everywhere at once; one had apparently hung her dress from a screen, and still others fixed the breakfast table.

“Oh, I’m glad.” The older girl was brisk, solicitous. “Well, I haven’t much time; I am expected in court.” She stretched her arms over her head, twisting her body and yawning gracefully before setting down the fruit and wiping her hands on a napkin. “Please, relax, and enjoy your breakfast,” she said, moving to the dressing table where her jewelry was arranged. Selecting a woven cuff, Margaery examined it, and slipped it into one slim wrist. “It’s a lovely morning,” she added with a smile, gesturing to the daylight around them.

A handmaiden stood studiously by to help Sansa into a dressing gown as she rose from the bed. She adjusted the sash around her waist and waited, awkwardly, for Margaery’s goodbye.

Finished adorning herself, Margaery crossed to the bed and clasped Sansa’s hands with a warm smile. “Please do come back and see me soon,” she said positively. “It would make me very happy to see you again, Sansa. I do hope you feel the same about me.”

Her meaning was clear. Sansa bit her lip and watched as Margaery departed, and she turned away only once the older girl had gone.  
  
 

 

 

Sansa went to the godswood, and she went to the castle sept. In the end, she came back to Margaery and her court. In truth, where else did she have to go?

Margaery’s passel of pretty cousins, like a flock of pretty birds, filled most of Sansa’s time. “Your hair is so lovely,” cooed Elinor, the eldest, “just look at the color. Tully red, isn’t that it?” She reached forward and touched impulsively. “And this gown, it’s exquisite.” Her hand went to Sansa’s waist, admiring the gown that Sansa wore practically every day; it was one of the few that fit her anymore, and that she hadn’t destroyed with smoke on the horrible day she’d had her first moon’s blood. “Gods, she’s lovely, isn’t she, girls? Our King Joffrey must have been half out of his mind when he put you down, dear. I daresay you’re the prettiest girl in this court.”

Sansa smiled awkwardly and said nothing. Little, dark-haired Alla chimed in, “Now, you’re being unfair to our Margaery.” Elinor gave a tinkling little laugh. “Well, they’re of a kind, wouldn’t you say? Equally lovely, the two of them.”

They were all like that, Margaery’s cousins, hothouse flowers who could overwhelm with their sticky cloying sweetness. The cousins were lovely themselves, with the Tyrell bloom in their cheeks, and the long curling brown hair that was the mark of a Tyrell lady. But most impressive was their innate ability to come at Margaery’s beck and call, doing so with ready smiles and streams of sweet words.

Sansa was a bit uneasy around these girls, and kept herself slightly apart even as they all bent together to giggle over half-whispered gossip (airless tidbits, always concerning Tyrell court members whose names Sansa was still trying to keep straight). So it was as a cautious observer in the southron court that Sansa learned Margaery’s movements, her smiles, her voice. Sansa watched Margaery from the shade of her cousins’ circle, taking in how she moved, laughed, flirted, charming everyone with whom she spoke.

She and Margaery had spent only a few nights together since the court dinner. On those sporadic nights Margaery’s embraces were sweet, her sighs and kisses passionate, and Sansa was gratified by the care she took, her hands always gentle and questioning—but it felt wrong somehow. Whenever this golden girl reached for her in the privacy of her chambers, that stupid, gnawing question tugged at Sansa: _Why?_ And there was something distracted and almost anxious in the older girl’s caresses, as if she were always expecting Sansa to pull away and flee as she had done that first night. _Well, she isn’t entirely without reason, is she?_ Sansa thought sharply, with the fitful gloom that grasped her whenever she contemplated their situation.

For there was the matter, too, that they could do no more than kiss, before Sansa would be all seized with panic and ask Margaery to stop her kisses, using either words or choked actions. Margaery was infinitely patient, gentle, but the wedge between them drove ever deeper. It hurt Sansa to realize that she could not open herself up to Margaery again, not like that blissful, mindless first time—but she’d already been laid vulnerable and bare once before. All of Margaery’s many promises could not assuage her fears about having it happen again.

  

 

 

One rare day, however, Margaery came to Sansa as she sat in the castle gardens, a bit apart from the rest of the courtiers, listening to a Tyrell minstrel playing a love song. “May I join you?” she whispered in Sansa’s ear and Sansa stiffened, but then bent her head with a small embarrassed laugh. “Yes, of course,” she answered quietly. The Tyrell girl brushed back her skirts and sat on the bench beside Sansa, listening in calm repose for a few minutes.

“Do you like this song?” Margaery said quietly after a time, leaning in so that her breath was warm on Sansa’s ear. Sansa nodded. “And why is that?”

“It’s romantic,” Sansa whispered, conscious of how childish it sounded. But, despite everything, it was true. She still liked to hear the songs. Only now when Sansa could stand to listen to them, she listened with an aching sadness in the place where she’d previously kept her sighing dreams.

Margaery’s hand slipped down the side of her lap, so that her littlest finger brushed the side of Sansa’s hand folded demurely there on her skirts. Her touch set off a little corresponding constellation of thrills.

“How’s that?” she whispered back.

“He’s a chivalrous knight,” Sansa said softly, a little dizzy from their contact. “He loves her, but he will not touch her until all obstacles to their love have been overcome. They have loved each other purely for seven years, and have never laid a hand on one another.”

Sansa could feel Margaery looking at her, eyes shaded under the fan of her dark lashes.

“Ah,” the Tyrell girl said after a moment, a shaded note in her voice. She leaned back. “I see. Yes, I see.”  
  
 

 

 

And later, when Margaery asked if Sansa might recite some of that lovely song they’d heard—or sing, if she did not feel too embarrassed—Sansa didn’t immediately realize what the older girl was doing.

So she sang a few bars, feeling self-conscious, and faltered out when she couldn’t remember the words. But Margaery beamed from ear to ear, and clapped approvingly. “Oh, that was lovely. I do love the part about the knight.”

“Yes, Serwyn of the Mirror Shield was always one of my favorites... he’s so chivalrous,” Sansa sighed. “A true knight. It always sounds so romantic in the songs.” She caught herself, frowning slightly. “And, it’s romantic precisely because those knights _only_ exist in the songs.” _A true knight_. She sounded as stupid as Cersei Lannister had always said she was.

“Oh, only in the songs—is that so?” Margaery challenged, eyes dancing. “Well, I can play the knight too.” She pulled herself to her feet and grabbed up a silvery vest from her dressing table. When she put it on backwards, it made a passable excuse for a breastplate. “Here’s my armor. What now?”

Sansa pressed her hand to her mouth, quelling her surprised amusement. “What are you...”

“I’m your knight!” Margaery said gaily. “But I haven’t much idea of what a knight is supposed to do. You’ll have to help me. Tell me, what comes next?”

“I—” Sansa’s uncertainly melted in the face of Margaery’s smiling openness, her expression insisting that this was all in good fun, like one of the silly court games she played with her cousins. “Why, you—you have to come rescue me.”

The Tyrell girl drew herself up and shook her shoulders with a broad, intrepid expression. “All right.” She wrinkled her nose and tried again, with a deeper voice. “ _All_ right.”

“Oh, and you need a sword,” Sansa added, trying not to giggle.

“Naturally.” Margaery picked up a candlestick and brandished it experimentally. “Aha!” She galloped around the room, swerved around the bed, and stopped at the foot. “My lady,” she declared, “I’ve come to squire you hence from this—this tower of misery, where the evil king has kept you hidden away.”

Warming to the game, Sansa clasped her hands to her breast, swallowing her laughter. “Oh, my lord! I... I thought you would never come, and I’ve been waiting all this time.”

“Wait no longer, my lady. I shall climb your tower and save you from this horrible beast!” Margaery flung her candlestick away and leapt onto the bed, causing Sansa to lose herself in a fit of giggles. The older girl dropped to her knees, lowering her head to place a courtly kiss on Sansa’s hand—then she looked up at Sansa expectantly, blue eyes wide, breaking the charade. “Now you have to woo me,” Sansa directed her, smiling.

“Oh, well yes—of course.” Margaery cleared her throat. “My lady,” she proclaimed dramatically, “your aspect is as fair as that of any blooming lily.” She bent to kiss Sansa’s bared shoulder, and the side of Sansa's neck (far more passionately than a chivalrous knight would do before courtship was complete, but Sansa resisted the urge to correct her). “Your hair is as fiery as... um, autumn leaves, and your lips—oh, seven hells, I never was any good at poetry,” Margaery said breathlessly and, dispensing with words for a while, pulled Sansa down beside her to show her just how lovely she thought Sansa’s lips could be. Soon they were both lost in fits of laughter as Margaery tried to invent more poetic snippets while pressing kisses to Sansa’s flushed skin. “Your skin is as smooth as waxen candles,” she tried, pulling a face even as she said it. “That’s _really_ terrible,” Sansa lamented, in between unladylike snorts of laughter.

“Well, enough of this silly poetry talk! How’d you like to come into my castle?” Margaery growled playfully and pushed Sansa down onto the bed, straddling her with a laughing look. “Why, you’re the prettiest maiden in all the seven kingdoms,” she added, her voice losing its manly pretense as she gently pushed the hair back from Sansa's face.

“... I suppose you say that to all the girls,” Sansa said, her heart squeezing.

“Only you,” Margaery assured her softly. “I crown you my Queen of Love and Beauty. Your wreath of flowers is waiting.”

Suddenly with a grave aspect, Sansa whispered, “I’ve been waiting for you for a long time, my white knight.” Margaery looked at her, long and carefully. When she bent her head to meet Sansa’s mouth, her sweet, lingering kisses tasted of understanding.

“Well, I told you. I’m here now,” she said quietly.

And she was. Sansa closed her eyes and let herself feel her hips relaxing, the cradle of her spine untensing, Margaery’s fingers warm on her belly and breath warm on her thighs. She let herself go, and tremblingly, hotly allowed Margaery to take what had been claimed before only under frightening and confusing circumstances.

 

 

 

After, she sighed contentedly, smoothing her hand over the curve of Margaery’s stomach.

“Did you like that?” Margaery asked, pushing back a strand of Sansa’s hair and kissing her forehead. Chest rising, falling, rising, Sansa nodded tremulously and Margaery’s mouth quirked into a smile. “I thought you might,” she said, simple satisfaction in her voice.

“This is wonderful,” Sansa murmured after a long pause, luxuriating in the warmth of their tangled selves, the softness of the sheets, everything. “Can we do it again?” she asked, lifting her head from the pillows with sudden eagerness at the thought.

That earned her a laugh. “Don’t worry, sweetling,” said Margaery, leaning back onto the bed and closing her eyes with a smile, “we have all the time in the world for that.”

It was a lie, and they both knew it. But it was a nice lie, _harmless really_. And so neither of them bothered to correct it.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from _To My Excellent Lucasia, On Our Friendship_ , poem by Katherine Fowler Philips ([x](http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/katherine-philips/to-my-excellent-lucasia-on-our-friendship/)).
> 
>  
> 
> _Edited 8/18/14._


	3. And fainting, on Her yellow Knee / Fall softly, and adore—

 

 

When she was young, Sansa had thought love was fundamentally simple. All the great love stories had their difficulties at first, a catalogue of obstacles that keep lovers apart: interfering parents; prior betrothals; vicious wars; villains who imprisoned maidens in towers; roving marauders; dragons, krakens, and other fantastic beasts. But once all the trials had been endured, those storybook knights and ladies would fall into each other’s arms as if nothing could ever tear them apart. Or, if the lovers belonged to the tragic songs and were forced to separate, they would remain bound only by the unbreakable thread of their love.

Sansa found it confounding and wonderful that in this affair, this thing growing between her and Margaery, there were times when it all seemed exactly like a storybook romance—and other moments when it seemed to have nothing in common with her girlhood flights of fancy, nothing at all.

She didn’t know what Margaery thought of their dalliance, what she might call it; it wasn’t something they discussed, and so went unspoken between them. Sansa herself was at a loss as to how to name what they had. All she knew was that what she’d found with Margaery was edged with happiness of a kind she’d no longer thought possible. It was a happiness that by rights ought to belong to a time far behind her, when she’d been innocent and stupid enough to believe anything she was told. But this shimmering thing, Margaery’s laugh and the feeling of her soft hands… could it be that after all the monsters Sansa had managed to evade, this was _her_ great love story? _Her_ happy ending after all those horrors?

The thought almost made her laugh. Only in her dreamiest, most illusory moments could Sansa manage to seriously consider that particular fiction, for she no longer believed in even her own stories. And yet…

With Margaery, it felt as though they were creating a world anew, a world in which they existed for whispered confessions under the sheets, stolen moments in half-sunshine, twining fingers under the dinner table. It seemed that Margaery, who had always been so busy before, managed to almost always be with Sansa—or was it only that she allowed Sansa to take up more of her spare moments? Sansa wasn’t quite sure. In truth, after Margaery first won her over, it was some time before she was again aware of everything outside of their little kingdom of two.

But those hopelessly romantic stories of her childhood had never written between the lines, never warned of the fear and timidity that could come paralyzingly between two people. The honeymoon days following Margaery’s sweet knightly efforts were not all perfect: it still felt like a minor eternity before Sansa could finally accept that Margaery was kissing her because she _wanted_ to. But the Tyrell girl’s attentions never faltered, and it seemed that she was honest in her passion if nothing else. At last the tendrils of anxiousness stopped snaking so tightly around Sansa’s neck, and she began to let Margaery hold her without second-guessing every caress.

Had really it been so long since someone had spoken to her without a thin false smile, and touched her with something other than pity or contempt? (Oh—the soft, hot memory of Margaery seated on the bed, head resting against Sansa’s bare waist with her eyes shut tight as a child’s, while Sansa stood before her and dazedly stroked her hair, alive with the sensations struggling in her chest… And how a few moments later, Margaery had started to kiss her stomach, and then everywhere else.) Margaery’s easy manner as a lover was just as carefree as her laughing demeanor in court, but everything she did—the warmth of her very touch—felt like a revelation to a girl who no longer remembered what it meant to be lighthearted. It was that very irreverence that Sansa was grateful for most of all: the incredible simplicity of someone who spoke to her lightly, laughingly, of anything and everything. Margaery did all of that, and it was worlds away from what Sansa had known only a short time before. 

And so this was what she referred to in confused shorthand as love. Sansa knew it wasn’t the right word, not yet, and perhaps not ever—but she didn’t know what else to call it. She didn’t know if there was a right word. There was, as she was growing steadily more aware, very little she _did_ know about anything they were doing together.

 

 

 

As she adjusted to the impossible glamour of Margaery’s affections, Sansa found an equally satisfying solace in the company of the Tyrell court. After months starved for any real companionship, it was such a warm relief to fill her days with the kinds of mindless social activities that could be found in every small court across Westeros. There were fiercely competitive games of cards and cyvasse with Margaery’s aunts and occasionally her thorny grandmother (whom Sansa was quite sure cheated, though she was never able to prove it); needlework with Elinor, Alla, and Megga, who would enthusiastically embroider just about anything they could get their hands on; and _endless_ gossip. Every lady in court, it seemed, had taken it upon herself to give Sansa an idea of Highgarden society, and they all jostled for her company in a slightly overwhelming yet enjoyable way. Rosy-cheeked Lady Meredyth Crane rattled off all the southron marriages in recent memory, and then proceeded to detail all the seasonal balls and celebrations Sansa could expect to attend in the Reach. Lady Taena Merryweather blinked at Sansa with sultry heavy-lidded eyes and whispered of the scandalous love affairs that everyone still talked about behind closed doors. Pale, wan Lady Graceford, who was with child, preferred the tragic scandals—the dissolved marriages, the suicides, the women who died in childbirth. (Sansa didn’t like to hear those stories as much but smiled, nodded, and listened just as graciously as she did for all the other ladies.)

There was always a musician or two playing his lilting songs at the edge of court, too, and Sansa liked to sit close and listen to the unfamiliar southron melodies, blushing whenever the singer winked and smiled at her. She thought that perhaps she might learn some of the songs, and make Margaery smile one night by surprising her with a rendition of _A Rose of Gold_ or _The Maids That Bloom in Spring_.

Margaery herself never ran out of visitors, as there seemed to be no end to the people who came to pay respects and curry favor with the queen-to-be. When she was not giving her guests a private audience, the lady Tyrell received visitors amid the full court, conducting several deft conversations at once as she moved about like a gilded butterfly in her flowing skirts. The older girl would sometimes glance over with a warm, fond look that set Sansa’s heart all aflutter, but Sansa was otherwise left to entertain herself however she chose. It was entirely calming, even wonderful, and she decided she was wholly content to stay in Margaery’s shadow.

No Lannisters ever visited the Tyrells’ little court, however, and she was unspeakably glad for it.

 

 

 

On the day that Margaery rode out of the city gates accompanied by her fiancée and no less than half the Tyrell court, Sansa glowed with happiness to find a message in Margaery’s hand on the breakfast table, requesting Sansa's audience later that day upon her return from the hunt.

Margaery was not yet in her chambers when Sansa arrived, so Sansa drifted out onto the balcony to sun herself. Everything was struck golden and new in the afternoon light, and the sun-drenched minutes slowed sleepily until, at last, sounds of entrance came from behind her. “My lady,” Margaery declared from the door, a streak of wild, lively happiness crossing her face.

And Sansa felt something go warm and melting inside, at odds with her outward hesitation. She smiled tremulously in response, but said nothing—she didn’t have to, she never had to, with Margaery.

The older girl threw an openly inviting look over her shoulder as she turned, crossing to the bed. Her hair was wilder than usual, curls blown all astray from riding, and rosy color was high in her cheeks. “Come here,” she demanded sweetly, extending her arm as she folded herself down onto the ivory coverlet. Following obediently into the shaded room, Sansa took the older girl’s hand and moved as if to sit on the bed beside her. But Margaery tightened her grasp and pulled Sansa onto her lap in one swift movement.

“My beautiful girl,” she said, burying her face in Sansa’s hair. “My lovely, sweet girl.”

Heart racing, Sansa turned to put both arms around Margaery’s neck, and carefully let herself enjoy being held. The older girl’s blood was up, and even through the filmy dress she wore it was evident that her body was heated, warm to the touch.

“You’re as refreshing as a glass of ice water,” the lady Tyrell murmured slowly, pushing aside Sansa’s hair so that her face drew level with the hollow of Sansa’s throat, “after a long day in the company of this sweltering court.” She punctuated her complaint with an unexpected little nip that made Sansa squeak in surprise, skin now prickling with its own responding heat.

“How was the hunt?” Sansa asked, squirming backwards out of easy reach.

“Oh, it was fine. I rode down a doe, but,” said Margaery languidly, “it was hard to stay interested when I knew I had a much finer prize waiting at home.” She looked at Sansa in amusement, diverted by her own play-acting imitation of some virile satisfied lord, before dropping her gaze with a private little smile. She ran her fingertips slowly down the perimeter of Sansa’s bare arms, shoulder to wrist.

“I think Joffrey may have sprained his ankle, jumping off his horse,” Margaery added, her tone growing light again, “but he refused to let on. He had his pride, you see. But if you spot him limping around court with a face like an angry weasel…”

Sansa’s genuine burst of laughter turned into a gasp when Margaery leaned in to mouth at her neck, not entirely gently. A moment stuttered by, Sansa’s heart speeding in time to an insistent, matching pulse somewhere _else_ as Margaery traced lips and teeth across her skin—and just as she was on the flushed brink of pleading a kiss, even rolling her hips closer to seek some wordless fractured relief, her tormentor abruptly pulled away. “So, did you miss me today?” demanded Margaery, tilting her head as innocently as a septa.

“No,” Sansa retorted achingly, shifting her weight. It was a lie.

“You’re heartless. I daresay you’ll make me cry if you’re not kinder.” Margaery’s hands had become distracted in Sansa’s lap, toying with the sweep of her gown.

“I didn’t miss you at all. I was very busy with— _with_ —”

Sansa inhaled sharply as the older girl’s inquisitive fingers disappeared under her skirts and moved, proprietary, towards their goal. In short order Margaery had found what she sought and when she turned her face up, Sansa nearly melted in delicious shame to see her new, significant expression. “Oh… already?” inquired Margaery, with adorable slyness.

Sansa blushed harder than she’d ever known she could, averting her eyes although it was quite clear that Margaery was enjoying her desperate discomfort. She shook her head in vain, twisting her legs together in Margaery’s lap as if there could be any denying the want they now both knew was there.

“No?” Raising one graceful eyebrow, Margaery withdrew her daring hand, shifted away—then put her fingers in her mouth and _licked_. She met Sansa’s look of glazed disbelief with a bold stare, completely unashamed. But her mouth wore that teasing softness that always impelled Sansa forward like a gentle push, assuring her that yes, she too could do these things, could be so bold. Gods, the things she did, Margaery, could be so… so startling and unladylike that Sansa would have never thought she’d be able to follow suit, much less enjoy them. That was, until she tried.

“Well. I suppose if you don’t want it, then…” Margaery drew back, placing both hands behind her on the bed. Her teasing eyes were bright with a barely concealed smile, just daring Sansa to take what she wanted.

Again Sansa blushed, feeling as if she might burn up from all this heat. She had never been the aggressor, never initiated; she didn’t know how. Stuck, though, and desperately sensing her own inexperience, she leaned forward and tremblingly extended one hand to touch the side of the older girl’s face. Drawing closer, determined to go on yet nearly dizzy with nerves, Sansa closed her eyes. Her world was reduced to the feeling of Margaery’s smooth skin beneath her fingers, the peach-skin softness of her cheek—and then, in the split second after the breathless tiny distance between them had been erased, the velvet wet of Margaery’s lips as they met her own, as delicately as a butterfly settling on a flower.

Her eyes fluttered open at the touch, and she saw that Margaery was still watching her steadily. Sansa pulled back and drew a light, shuddering breath before again leaning close, tilting her head to deliver another shy kiss and then another. Breaking her sultry demeanor at last, Margaery gave a girlish breath of a smile that made Sansa’s heart squeeze tight. Then, with a little sound, she collapsed backwards onto the bed, pulling Sansa eagerly on top of her. In their ensuing tangle Sansa felt the gossamer sensation of eyelashes on skin, and the press of Margaery’s hands as she tenderly brushed them backwards over Sansa’s face.

“Is that how you like to kiss, my lady?” Margaery said in a soft crooning sort of way, reaching up to smooth Sansa’s hair with one hand. Slowly, conscious of the unfamiliar position, Sansa raised herself up to survey the girl who lay looking up at her with sweet expectance. She leaned down over Margaery and kissed her carefully. The older girl was receptive, and after a moment opened her mouth for Sansa, and they lost themselves to minutes caught up in lingering, languorous jasmine-blossom kisses.

Margaery was murmuring softly, almost purring with wordless sounds by the time Sansa’s heart stopped pounding so loudly that she could hear nothing else. She felt a sudden, acute satisfaction at doing this, causing Margaery such enjoyment.

“Do you want to—” the older girl said breathily, arching her back slightly and stroking her own bosom as if unable to wait. Her meaning was clear but Sansa hesitated, half-caught, suddenly fearful. “I—I don’t know…”

“Oh _,_ it’s _easy_ ,” Margaery breathed. She reached for Sansa’s hand, curling Sansa's fingers in with her own, and pressed their intertwined hands to her breast. “Like that,” she said in a voice that was liquid and golden, moving Sansa’s fingers a little lower, “—just like that.” She relaxed then, trustingly, her chest rising and falling steadily under Sansa’s trembling hands. Sansa leaned closer with the strangest thrill at their positions being reversed, as the thought struck her: _So this is what it always felt like for her_. Her hands moved down the older girl’s body with tentativeness that turned to tenderness, then curiosity, and wonder. Margaery’s eyes watched Sansa with hot sweet patience, until the older girl sighed quietly to herself and closed them. Rolling back the silk of her lover’s clothing, Sansa bent to add her mouth to her touches, continuing until her southbound kisses found their mark. “See?” she heard the older girl say, or maybe whisper. “It’s as easy as breathing.”

And when her gentle guidance had been successful, Margaery opened willingly for Sansa, yielding with a soft chorus of affirming, appreciative little noises. The lush, fertile spread of her under Sansa’s hands was nearly intoxicating; Sansa stretched out her fingers, holding on tightly, and marveled that she could. The arch of Margaery’s spine and rush of her hips, the urgency with which she pushed for more, the ready crescendo of her responsive sighs, and the way she tugged her fingers through the hair at the nape of Sansa’s neck—all of that gave Sansa the soft, tangible, most unfamiliar sense of _power._ She leaned fiercely into Margaery’s rippling body, tasting her, and didn’t let up until she felt Margaery’s body jerk like a harp-string that had been plucked.

After it was done, and Margaery had cried out in a run of little crashing sounds and covered her eyes with one hand, Sansa pulled back to hover breathlessly at Margaery’s flushed knee. _So that’s what all the songs are about_ , she thought, a fine mist of wonder and realization settling over her. _I’m bound to her now, in a way._

And it had not been unpleasant, either, though nothing like anything she had ever expected to find herself doing.

“You look so innocent, but you’re driving me wild,” Margaery said a few moments later, sounding as if she would have added her customary cheerful laugh if she had the breath. She exhaled through her nose, gathering herself. “You’re _very_ good, you’ve learned so much,” she added, smiling slightly. With a shiver Sansa recognized the flattering caress in her voice, an echo of formal speeches given in the throne room and public conversations in court. She flinched a little, inwardly, although she knew that Margaery’s compliment was meant to be genuine. But she didn’t respond to what she had heard.

“You’ve made all me all sweaty now, too,” she said instead, which made Margaery laugh with unexpected brightness.

“Well, luckily,” said the older girl, sitting up, “I know just the thing for that.”

 

 

 

It was humid that day in King’s Landing, and the tepid bath water felt like a balm. Sansa closed both eyes and leaned back against the side of the wooden bathtub. Scooping a cupped handful of water up to her neck, she released her hands and let the water sluice down her body, skin turning silkily, pleasingly cool where it fell.

Margaery knelt beside the tub on a soft piece of towel with her hair pinned up loosely up on her head, already clean after giving herself a quick, thorough wash and splash of scented water from the dressing table. She washed Sansa carefully, soaping Sansa's hair and body and rubbing her hard with a cloth, and it caused an unexpected thrill whenever her nimble, slick fingers accidentally slipped against Sansa’s skin. Looking briefly over her turned shoulder, Sansa caught sight of the water droplets drying on the older girl’s nude body, gold-flecked in the shimmering late afternoon sun, and felt a warm pleasurable flush of possessiveness.

Sansa turned back to gaze out across the open balcony, running idly over the memory of Margaery’s expert touches, her sureness and sweet directions. Again, she was considering how exactly they might name their relationship. Sisters by marriage were often affectionate, and noblewomen shared kisses all the time without it meaning a thing, but even Sansa knew that they had gone far beyond the boundaries of normal, platonic sisterly behavior the moment they’d stepped into Margaery’s rooms for the first time.

“You’ve been with women—girls—before,” Sansa said at last, breaking their comfortable, dreamy silence. She wasn't sure if it was a statement or a question.

Margaery lowered her hands. “Yes,” she said simply, fixing Sansa with an open look. “But you’re the loveliest I’ve ever been with.”

Sansa couldn’t hide her smile. She'd grown accustomed to appreciative remarks on her beauty when she was promised to Joffrey, but those had fast lost their savor when it became clear that they were meant to signify her only useful attribute. Pretty, but stupid; that was all she had been to those people. But Margaery said her compliments like she meant them—meant them as much as she meant anything, Sansa supposed.

“Women… and only women?” she asked, raising her head straight. She was acutely, almost painfully curious. Margaery was, after all, writing on a blank page for her to understand.

“Oh, why do you ask?” Margaery replied teasingly, and Sansa let out a short embarrassed breath. It was so hard to be serious with Margaery: she could laugh off just about anything, and sometimes deflected Sansa’s questions as playfully as she did now.

“I was just—I only wondered…” stammered Sansa, chagrined and still unsure exactly what she was asking. She had not yet learned how to phrase questions the way Margaery did, making every word sound inviting. Instead, her words came out as clumsy and fumbling as she felt saying them.

Margaery shook her head, effectively letting Sansa off the hook. She spoke very lightly. “Well, you see, my grandmother always told me that if you’re going to spread your legs, you might as well be smart about it. After all, for us women, what comes of it _is_ rather important. Turn around.”

Sansa turned around obediently, facing Margaery like an expectant student.

“When I was just a little girl, I learned the power that women can have over men. The South is a place of high drama, where everyone’s blood runs hot—perhaps my ladies have told you something about this? Anyhow, from a young age I was able to see it all for myself. I saw the many ways that women can enchant men... and also the many ways that men can ruin women. And I had my grandmother warning me to be very careful, because there is no room in this world for a woman to lie with a man without real consequences. Give me your hand.”

Sansa extended her hand, and Margaery began to scrub at the nails with a soft soapstone. 

“Anyhow,” she continued, head tipped as she worked, “it all seemed rather daunting when I was only a little girl. How was I supposed to wield power over men, successfully getting what I wanted, when it was so ultimately risky to bear a child? But then I turned thirteen, and I fell in love with my cousin. And it just so happened that this cousin was a woman.”

 _Her cousin?_ Sansa felt an unexpected cold tremor run down her spine, filling her with jealous dread. “You mean—”

“Oh, none of the cousins here at court, the little dears,” Margaery said blithely, glancing up in amusement. “They’re far too young. No, this cousin was a cousin by marriage, a Florent, and she was much older than me. Viviane, was—well, is—her name. And I was simply enchanted by her.” Margaery’s features softened as she remembered. “She was beautiful, charming, accomplished, and I, though just beginning to grow into my figure, was still half a child. She taught me very much, more than anyone ever has apart from my grandmother, and I think I would have done anything for her.” She set down the linen washcloth and played with it with her fingers for a moment, and tipped her head with a sad sort of ruefulness in her eyes. “Then she left Highgarden for her husband’s estate, but it was too late. I had already ‘seen the light’, so to speak.”

“So… you've always preferred women?” Sansa said tentatively, trying to put to bed the ghost of this elegant, beautiful woman whose memory gave Margaery an expression that Sansa had never seen before.

“Oh, who wouldn’t?” Margaery said, looking up with a half-smile. “Soft, sweet-smelling, fair, lovely… why, we’re as like as like can be.” She stroked Sansa’s cheek and leaned close for a sweet, fast kiss, then drew back coyly as if that were all the explanation necessary.

Sansa’s lips, which had parted receptively for the kiss, remained apart as her next question rose to mind. “Only women?” she persisted. She felt like a simple-minded fool for belaboring the point, but she only was trying to understand.

“Men are wonderful,” said Margaery, with a sweet little shrug, “for many things, like fighting wars, wearing armor, and producing babies. They’re perfectly suited to be husbands and provide for our children. But if I had my way, I wouldn’t have them often in my bed if there were no heirs that needed to be made.”

Sansa considered this carefully. “My septa never told me that women could share their beds with other women,” she said at last, curling her fingers over the side of the tub and looking sharply at Margaery.

“That’s because she was preparing you for the marriage bed, my dear,” replied Margaery, very matter-of-fact. “Outside of that, why should the Faith care about what people do in the privacy of their own chambers? They turn a blind eye to any activities that don’t produce heirs or bastards. As does everyone else,” she added, “ _officially_. You might do anything you please so long as you’re careful.”

Sansa looked at her wonderingly. This was Margaery’s world, and she was beginning to understand why Margaery chose to live in it as she did.

The older girl went on, outlining her principles with convincing simplicity. “That’s the wonderful thing about being with women: there’s no worrying about heirs being produced. You can make love to your husband, have plenty of little children running around to keep you occupied—all the while continuing to share your bed with other women.

“Even for the Faith, it makes things very simple. In their eyes, I’ll be pure as driven snow for my marriage bed.”

Sansa crinkled her nose, trying to understand. “And so… are you a maiden?” _Does that mean_ I _am still a maiden?_ She hadn’t thought about that before. She didn’t completely feel like a maiden, any longer… although, in so other many ways, she still did.

“Oh, who’s to say?” Margaery raised her shoulders lightly. “And why bother defining it? If I’d never been with a man, and had only lain with women, I might as well be as chaste as a Silent Sister as far as the Faith and the court are concerned. As for the truth—well, the truth is what we make it, sweet girl.”

And that was that. Sansa stood up gingerly to dry herself, and stepped out of the tub. Her natural modesty returned as soon as she was out of the water and she blushingly covered herself with both hands, so that Margaery had to lift her arms one at a time to rub rose-scented oil into her breasts, swallowing back a little smile while doing so. Once she had finished with Sansa’s upper half, the older girl sank to her knees, her expression sliding into something more intent and focused.

This look of fixed concentration on Margaery’s face as she applied oil to Sansa’s body, humming tunelessly to herself, was something new. It made her seem, as Sansa looked down at her, strangely vulnerable. That expression… Sansa couldn’t quite place the expression that Margaery wore, and it stayed in her mind until late that night as she lay abed recalling the sweet, wistfully downturned smile of Margaery’s when she’d spoken of her cousin Viviane, and its echoing shadow on her face as she’d later tended to Sansa. She wondered what that beautiful older cousin could have been like to make Margaery so adamant about loving women, and women alone.

 

 

 

Margaery went off to Joffrey and all the rest, came back, and remained opaque in many ways. But Sansa was widening her social sphere too, and she bloomed in the Tyrell court. To her pleasure, she found that she could charm them all almost as effortlessly as Margaery did. With the shining assurance of Margaery’s affections in her breast, it was so much easier to inhabit a version of herself that fluttered like an airy little bird, saying and doing all the right things.

She fashioned her second self in Margaery’s image, for at times the older girl truly did seem the embodiment of the storied princesses Sansa had sought to emulate when she was only a girl. Filling the royal role with casual grace, all perfect posture and charming conversation, Margaery was everything that Sansa had ever aspired to be and more—and that was only the beginning of who she was.

Sansa was growing fiercely curious about this girl whose body she was slowly memorizing, but whose mind remained half a mystery. She wanted to curl her fingertips _in_ , pull at what lay beneath that delightful exterior, and now that she’d found out one dark driving need ( _Viviane_ , a name that itself sounded like part of some enchanting spell), her curiosity flared ever greater about the depths of Margaery’s motivations. _Could she ever speak of me like that, some day?_ But Margaery in her turn appeared to take Sansa’s personality as a given, and her only apparent area of curiosity concerned just how daring she could push Sansa to be. And Sansa equally loathed and adored the aching, alarming suspense she felt each time (and how often it was!) the older girl teased her to the limits of her restraint in public.

Out hawking one day in the fields beyond King’s Landing, Margaery’s eyes stayed trained on her aunt Janna who stood before the ladies demonstrating how to handle the birds, but her hands at Sansa’s waist suggested the true focus of her attention. “That’s not the proper way to fasten the hawking gloves,” she said, head resting on Sansa’s shoulder and chin digging in a little, making Sansa lose all concentration. “You ought to lace them around twice.”

“Um.” Sansa’s fingers seemed to be all thumbs—understandably so, when all she could feel was the warm press of Margaery’s body behind her. 

“Come, Sansa, it’s not so hard,” Margaery breathed in her ear, hands squeezing tighter. Defeated, delighted, Sansa turned on her with a little hiss: “I can’t if you _do_ that—” But Margaery had gone, brushing her hot little mouth across Sansa’s ear as she retreated, with only an arch, naughty look over her shoulder to signal her later intentions.

When the hawking party stopped for lunch in a shaded glade, Margaery cheerfully took Sansa by the hand to settle down on the grass, slightly apart from all the others. Here at the edge of this pretty clearing, under the sweep of a weeping willow, Sansa thought one could almost forget that King’s Landing was only a few leagues away, the city hungry and mutinous and still half-burned out from the Battle of the Blackwater.

She and Margaery traded smiling looks without saying a word, and ate their grapes while idly watching the rest of the party settle down for lunch. The other ladies took no time in spreading themselves beautifully out on silken blankets, chattering away as they unpacked the picnic lunch. The falcon-master fed his merlins and peregrines scraps of meat, and the guards and knights dismounted from their horses with a chorus of good-natured jokes and ribbing. Certain at last that they were out of earshot of the others, Sansa turned away and gazed up at the cloud-streaked sky.

“It’s very pretty here,” she said softly. “Like a dream, or a story. Or the summer days I always dreamed of when I was young, and it was snowing.”

Margaery rolled onto her side, easy and warm. “Is that so, you sweet child of winter? What else did you dream of when it snowed?” 

“Well… only the usual things, I suppose.” Sansa blushed a little at Margaery’s encouraging nod, and went on. “I always wanted lots of children, a kind and handsome husband, and a home.” She had never voiced these dreams to Margaery before, but their naturalness with one another made her feel as if they’d spoken of them a hundred times. To think of it, all her youthful fantasies of marriage had featured a warm castle quite similar to Margaery’s descriptions of the southron castles of the Reach. The realization made Sansa feel funny. It was still so hard to believe that this all was real, and that it was happening to _her_.

Margaery’s expression was gentle, indulgent; but there was something in her face that made Sansa suddenly aware of how small her own dreams must seem. Self-consciously, she asked, “What did _you_ want when you were young?”

The Tyrell girl smiled reflexively, coiling the skeleton of the grape vine around her fingers. “To have many children, as well. And for those children to be kings and queens.”

Again Sansa had the evasive, slippery feeling that the Margaery she knew was only a tiny part of the complete girl. She carefully weighed her next words. “And… is that why you want to be queen?”

“Yes.” Margaery’s reply came without hesitation. “And also, for you.” Her rosebud mouth curled into a suggestive smile and Sansa felt herself blush unheeded, the flutter in her chest impossible to ignore even as she patiently reminded herself Margaery was only being a flirt. She took a deep breath and started again.

“You didn’t know me when you came here from the Reach to become Joffrey’s betrothed. Why, then? What is it you want?”

Margaery’s eyes slid to the horizon and she was silent. For a moment Sansa was afraid she would laugh and deflect the question, but then she spoke with quiet gravity. “It _is_ for people like you, Sansa. The dispossessed. Those who have no power. Because when a queen suffers her people suffer with her, and when she succeeds, they flourish as well.” She propped her chin on her hand and said plainly, “And because I will be a _good_ queen, Sansa. I know what needs to be done, and I know how to do it. There always must be someone to sit on the throne, doesn’t there? And, as my grandmother always says—better a smart ruler than a fool.”

I _would have been a good queen_ , Sansa thought suddenly, without bitterness. There was a slow sad pearl at the center of the thought, ruefulness for what could have been. _Me, at Joffrey’s side, if things had been_ _…_ _different._ But now she thought she knew something of the ugliness involved in being queen, and she didn’t like it. She thought of Cersei Lannister, exercising her frustrated rights by ordering two terrified girls to come together on the floor of her chambers. Not a shining example, to be sure. Yet Sansa thought a queen’s authority seemed defined more by the power she didn’t have than the power she did.

“Besides, shouldn’t we women strive to achieve the most that we can, when we are given the chance?” Margaery added, her voice very bright.

Sansa brought her attention back to her companion and exhaled softly. _Her_ dreams had always been of a glowing, full home; Margaery’s had been of a succession of children just as charming as she, and a cold, sharp throne. _And if that is Margaery’s idea of a happy ending_ , she thought, _then she can have it_. Old or new, Sansa’s dreams had nothing to do with this double-faced city with its dangerous, illusory beauty and its throne that drew blood even from the one who sat upon it.

“Don’t you agree, Sansa?” Margaery repeated, a little steel edging in. She put her hand on Sansa’s stomach to punctuate the question, fingers resting there flirtatiously, but also in a proprietary, possessive way. There was an expectant press in her voice, the same way she sometimes pressed her fingertips into Sansa’s spine when they made love, hard enough to leave marks. “Don’t you think we ought to always seek the most for ourselves?”

Sansa hesitated, staring off across the grass. Finally, sensing Margaery’s displeasure at her long silence, fingertips tensing on Sansa’s body, she sat up and said with a lightness she did not feel, “Yes, of course. Of course I do.”

 

 

 

She’d always thought that loving someone would be straightforward, that you’d do it with all your heart, holding nothing back—so the ease with which her minor deception had occurred alarmed Sansa. She had lied to Margaery, easily and almost without a thought, and it would be so easy to do it again… surely easier, in some instances, than telling the truth.

But she did not lie to Margaery again in so many words, not for some time. The main lie she told these days consisted of the measures she took to conceal the nature of her relationship with Margaery—measures that were made all the more difficult by how little importance Margaery herself seemed to give them.

Sansa would never forget the sweetly possessive way the older girl had turned to her in the middle of a meal—right _there_ at the table in front of Margaery’s aunt and mother and Lady Graceford and probably all the seven gods too—and directed her to “try this,” holding one hand under Sansa’s chin while offering a taste of whatever morsel she held on her fork. Sansa had gone violently red because everyone was looking, and could only obediently open her mouth and accept before the brush of Margaery’s soft fingers withdrew, and the older girl sat there smiling at her with coy, damnable satisfaction. Oh, it was easy enough for _Margaery_ to smile—the ostensibly sisterly gesture had nearly stopped Sansa’s heart in her chest. She feebly cursed Margaery for being able to act so natural, for coloring such an innocent gesture (at least, Sansa _hoped_ it would be seen as innocent) with something clearly speaking of greater intimacy. She didn’t even know what good it did to pretend when their every public interaction was charged with intensity, a double meaning layered onto each look, touch, and careful word. Despite all her own precautions, Sansa honestly felt as if she and Margaery were as obvious as could be to anyone who had eyes.

Yet there was a sort of dramatic relief in it, too. She knew ultimately that if there were any talk at all Margaery would take care of it as she took care of everything, resolving the matter so gracefully that everyone would forget there was ever a problem. Sansa knew also that Margaery had manufactured this playful game of risk for good reason. It was just another aspect of the older girl’s play-acting, building up the monstrous threat of discovery before bringing it down, a comfort mechanism to make Sansa feel like the most dangerous thing that could happen to her just now would be to get caught kissing her good-sister.

But, Sansa mused, losing herself again to lighthearted fanciful thoughts, perhaps that was not the _only_ reason Margaery played this game… for it certainly felt at times as if Margaery wanted to flaunt what they had, _wanted_ everyone to know that she had Sansa Stark in the palm of her hand, or on the flat of her back, or pressed up against a tree in the gardens, or… in any position she wanted, really, but— _that’s_ exactly _the kind of thing you’re not supposed to think about in public_ –!

The older girl did teach her more practical things, too: flower arranging, for one (like a mummer’s trick, she could arrange any random handful of blooms Sansa picked from the gardens into an enchanting arrangement without any apparent effort—even when Sansa gathered the ugliest flowers she could find, biting back laughter as she paired fuzzy hare’s ear with some hideous orange-and-white dotted lobelias). Margaery taught her how to stain her lips with the cut edge of a lemon, the sting of it turning her mouth kissably red, and how to subtly line her eyes with the burnt edge of a stick of cedar. She taught Sansa how to phrase any demand, no matter how extreme, as a flattering question, and how to spin out an entire conversation without revealing a single thing about oneself, winning over the other person with charming attentiveness.

And Sansa learned the recipe for moon tea, repeating the ingredients over with a burning red face until she could recite them from memory and Margaery nodded in satisfied approval. “Of course, you could always ask your maester to brew some for you,” Margaery said pragmatically, “but you never know whose pockets he might be in, and discretion is very important with this sort of thing. It’s best to know how to do these things for one’s self.” And, though mortified at the implication, Sansa knew Margaery was right; so she listened, and she learned.

Somewhat less suggestively, the other Tyrell women gave her several remedies and advices to relieve the discomfort of her moon’s blood when it came. Elinor advised the use of linseed oil to ease the pains in her stomach, and Septa Nysterica made them all dissolve in scandalized giggles when she reenacted a crude tale of a wife and husband plagued by the wife’s torrential moon’s blood. “Not exactly what they taught us in septa training,” Septa Nysterica said, chuckling merrily, “but certainly more interesting, don’t you think?” Sansa laughed too, her usual delicate sensibilities about bodily functions overcome by her relief at the frank, flippant manner with which they talked about ladies’ cycles. If these women thought moon’s blood was funny, not horrifying, then perhaps it was. “I never knew any of that before,” she said, smiling in appreciation.

“What, your septa never taught you?” Megga teased, the artlessness in her voice sharp enough to cut.

Sansa’s smile froze on her lips. _My septa ended up with her head on a spike_ _before she could teach me such things_. Taking one gimlet-eyed look at her, Septa Nysterica gave Megga a little smack on the back of the hand. “Now don’t be rude. _You_ might mind not acting like a little beast, but you’ll make Lady Sansa think I never taught you any manners.” The woman pinched her mouth at Sansa in an apologetic smile. “As you can see, dear, a septa’s work is never done.”

Sansa smiled tightly, civilly, and looked away.

Despite all her efforts to act normal, these infrequent reminders signaled that no matter how she chattered and laughed with the other girls, she would never be exactly like them. She was marked, different—but did she really want to change that, to be anything other than a silenced wolf amid twittering birds? How ironic it was that now, when she’d finally found the fairy tale court she’d once longed for, it all had the strange dark underpinnings of a nightmare. And everything seemed to be marked by the terrible, lurking feeling that everything would be pulled out from under her, just when she had finally let go of her fears. 

 

 

 

Sunlight striped Alla Tyrell’s hair the next afternoon in the garden court as she bit her lip in concentration, sketching a blossoming rose onto a piece of paper. “A pattern, for my needlepoint,” the girl explained when she saw Sansa looking. The youngest and most sympathetic of Margaery’s cousins, Alla always made a point to include Sansa in the court’s activities, often taking it upon herself to explain southron traditions she thought Sansa might not understand. “Here,” she added with sudden, childish generosity, and held out a few sheets of paper and a little piece of inky charcoal for Sansa to take.

Despite Sansa’s bashful protests that she couldn’t draw, the young Tyrell girl only shooed her away with a little smile. So Sansa sat down with her back to the open terrace, and stared at her empty page. What did people draw? Alla was drawing the sigil of her house. Artists often sketched pretty things… or likenesses of people. Portraits, like the kind people kept as remembrances of the ones they loved. 

She closed her eyes, and the images that sprang to mind were sudden, strong, and nearly overwhelming—and she did not realize she’d begun to draw until her page was already marked with several emerging shapes. The sun warmed her back, and though her neck soon began to ache from craning over her work, she did not stop. Time slowed as she drew, completely absorbed in translating the pictures in her mind’s eye to the page before her.

“It appears that your artistic talents are as great as your beauty, lady Sansa,” said a courtly voice over her shoulder.

Startled out of her focused state, Sansa looked up quickly, and experienced the absolute loveliest frisson of shock when she recognized her admirer. “Ser Loras,” she said, hands going all tingly as she hastily set down her piece of charcoal. “Th-thank you.”

The handsome knight looked down at her. Up close he was even more strikingly beautiful than usual, his mouth spread into a guarded, courteous smile. Sansa blushed just at the sight of him. “I’m only practicing, really,” she amended nervously.

“I see,” said Ser Loras, leaning over her shoulder for a better look. He tapped his finger on the sketch she was working on. “And who is this? He’s very handsome.”

Sansa swallowed. _I should have known better than to..._ But she could not bring herself to lie. “That’s my—my brother,” she answered, almost inaudibly. She refused to add the qualifier _traitor_ , though it sat heavy on her tongue like an obligation. “But—I can’t get his chin quite right,” she added with edged frustration. “He has a very nice rounded chin, yet I’ve made him look like some great fat lord from the Summer Isles.”

Ser Loras, thankfully, did not seem to care that she was making a portrait of a pretender king; he only chuckled softly (even his laugh was beautiful) and took the seat next to hers. “May I?” he asked. Then, to her bewilderment, he reached for the piece of charcoal, and looked down at the sketch. “Your brother has a more defined jaw, I take it?”

“Yes,” Sansa said, a little faintly. Her hand was all inky from the kohl, and now sweaty from her proximity to perfect Ser Loras. She tried to surreptitiously wipe it on her handkerchief beneath the table without his noticing. “Here—no, a little less there. And his beard sort of covers his face like—yes, like that.”

After adding a few long graceful lines and erasing his mistakes with a dampened thumb, Loras set down the charcoal and looked to Sansa for approval. “Better, my lady?”

Sansa’s heart yanked at her as she looked down at the newly fixed drawing.

“Yes,” she said in a muffled voice, “that’s Robb.”

A true knight would never embarrass a lady by catching her crying, and Ser Loras proved himself worthy of that accolade as he carefully avoided meeting Sansa’s wet eyes. He looked instead to the rest of the sketches, beautiful long lashes shading his eyes as he studied her work. “And all of these people—they’re also your family?” His tone was surprisingly gentle, and he seemed to know the answer to the question before he asked it.

Sansa nodded, pressing her mouth tight to keep composure. Across the page she had sketched rough facsimiles of her parents side-by-side, Bran, Rickon with Shaggydog, Jon Snow with a great fur collar about his neck, and her sister—though she hadn’t been able to get Arya’s features quite right, and instead had drawn an upright little figure fiercely brandishing a pointy little sword (which was probably a better likeness of her sister than any close-up portrait Sansa could have managed, really). They were smudgy from her mistakes and all looked rather different from how she saw them in her head, but they were there. She dabbed her eyes quickly with her smudged handkerchief, not caring if it made her face a little dirty.

“I didn’t know that you could draw, Ser Loras,” she said faintly, remembering her manners. “You have quite a talent for it.”

The knight dipped his head modestly. “My brother, Willas, taught me,” he said with a little smile. “Willas is a wonderful artist. When I was a child—whenever I wasn’t outdoors learning to tilt and joust, that is—he would wrangle me in front an easel and try to educate me about the finer things in life.” He gave a pleasant laugh. “He was only moderately successful, I’m afraid. My abilities are quite limited compared to his.” 

Sansa smiled to hear this about her proposed husband, and the tightness in her chest lessened just a little. She said politely, “That is wonderful to hear. Thank you for telling me, Ser Loras.”

“Of course, Lady Sansa.” Margaery’s brother moved as if to stand, but then a shadow crossed his face and he paused abruptly, his voice dropping in volume. “I… know it can be painful to remember those who are no longer with us, whether the separation is caused by distance or—or something more permanent.” He stared off across the garden and then, seeming to remember himself, spoke again with some difficulty. “We should treasure these things while we have them. I was happy to help you with this, my lady. Now you have something to remember your brother by, until you see him again.”

Sansa was practically speechless. And yet, not betraying the depths of what she had heard in his voice, she nodded wearing no more than a sweet blank courtier’s expression and said nothing. As soon as Ser Loras had left her she carefully, quickly folded up her drawing and slipped it into the pocket of her dress, washed all over with a cold relief once it was out of sight. She was glad that no one but Ser Loras had approached her, and seen what he had seen. She would not be so careless again.

 

 

 

Late that night near the hour of the wolf she lay frozenly in her bed and thought of her family.

She thought of her father, for whom she had learned to play the game of thrones, but learned too late. Now the stakes were higher than Sansa had ever dreamed, and at times it seemed so futile to keep playing at courtly intrigue. Her father was gone, after all—and no amount of Sansa’s perfect behavior would ever bring him back.

So at times it hurt all the more to see Margaery floating through court as though she hadn’t a care in the world (although that wasn’t _fair;_ she knew Margaery had good intentions). And it had hurt so unexpectedly to hear the broken pain in Ser Loras’s voice that afternoon, an unmistakable mirror to the sharp, secret ache she carried every day. She had to wonder, though, what sort of loss could have caused Ser Loras such grief. He was lucky, he was still surrounded by his family… _so who could he be mourning_?

Swallowing hard, Sansa thought abruptly of her father’s face, probing at the memory the way she might probe at a loose tooth, testing herself. _Yes_ —it hurt, and hurt no less than the last time she’d summoned the thought. She pressed the heels of her hands hard over her eyes, shaking her head as if that might blot the image away, shaking all over. Then without warning, Margaery was stirring drowsily behind her, warm fingers stroking questioningly down Sansa’s arm. “What is it, Sansa?”

And she could only shake her head, over and over again.

If only things had been different, she would have done everything right. She would have named all of her sons for her father. She would have sung songs at his bedside when he grew old and frail and ill. She would have written his letters for him without splattering any ink on the page, and she would have sat by his side as he received his northmen in the great hall of Winterfell in his old age, when they all came to feast and reminisce about the good years they had seen together. She would have done her duty as a Stark, and made him proud to have her for a daughter.

It was the first time that she’d really cried for him, tears hot and silent in the forgiving darkness, and it would not be the last. (And the fact that Margaery was there beside her, touching her comfortingly, anchoring her, was the assurance Sansa had lacked before, the assurance she hadn’t realized she needed to be able to let go. Before, she’d dreaded these feelings, been so terrified that giving in to her grief might send her spiraling away into the dark without any possible way to come back.)

But she didn’t answer Margaery’s question—let her draw her own conclusions. Let her plead, “Tell me,” as Sansa sobbed brokenly, her back turned, willfully shutting herself in alone with her dull heavy grief. If Margaery’s lively attitude concealed any intelligence, any hard understanding of how the world worked, then she would not have to ask why Sansa cried.

 

 

 

Finally, finally she was able to speak of her father. Margaery had coaxed the words out of her with endless patience, hours of just being at Sansa’s side, _just say it, you’ll feel better, sweetling, I know you will._

“He was the best man I ever knew,” she said softly, the words aching.

To her credit, Margaery did not try comfort Sansa with stupid empty platitudes. She spoke instead with unusual bluntness. “Willas is a good man, Sansa. I promise.”

Sansa hoped deeply that she was right—that Willas _was_ good, and would be good to her. If he were anything, anything at all like Margaery, Sansa knew she would be fine. 

But it had become truly difficult to imagine anything beyond the immediate future. She felt suspended in time, denying the inevitability of Margaery’s wedding, that far-off date with all of its attendant, impending changes. And when she lived in her memories—no matter how fiercely she struggled not to—moving forward with her life felt close to impossible.

“My father used to make a bouquet for my lady mother, every year,” she remembered now. “Every year, on the feast day for the Mother. He kept the old gods, but she prayed to the Mother. So on the day of the celebration, he would rise early and make her a great bouquet of flowers from the glass-walled gardens.”

“How romantic,” Margaery murmured, sounding a little sleepy.

Sansa nodded slowly in the darkness, though she knew the older girl couldn’t see. “They had an arranged marriage. She wasn’t supposed to marry him at first; she was engaged to his older brother. But he—he died. And they fell in love eventually. They did.”

She heard Margaery roll over and say ruefully, “That is truly sweet. My father, the dear fat thing, never lost much love for my cool-hearted mother, and I doubt she felt any differently about him.”

Sansa stared at the wall. “The bouquets were always terrible. Poorly composed things, all squashed together, too much of one thing and not enough of another. But he’d never let any of us help him, though I always tried. And when he was done, my mother would take it, and act as if it were the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.”

Margaery drew near and looked at her, close and careful in a splash of moonlight falling on the pillows.  “Oh, don’t be sad. Please don’t be sad,” she pleaded sweetly. But Sansa was not crying, which came as a surprise even to her. A lovely sadness settled on her, yearning and faint. “As if it were the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen,” she echoed softly, tension leaking out of her body.

Saying it aloud truly had alleviated some of the emotion that threatened to drown her whenever she longed for the past: just as Margaery had promised, she felt better… and yet, strangely unsettled. And that strange sense was there because… well, Margaery had long been the only thing that kept Sansa anchored in the present, providing a tender, gossamer version of reality from the shelter of her arms. And now, if she was just as adept at navigating the treacherous sea of Sansa’s memories—was there anything she couldn’t do, any area in which she wouldn’t cause Sansa to end up relying on her, and her alone?

 _No_ , she insisted inwardly, Margaery could only blunt the edges of her pain, could never reach the dark pool at its center, the black stain of loss. Or… _what if she could_? She was terrified that loving Margaery might make her forget what she could not afford to forget: who she was and where she came from, and what that _meant_. Sansa’s stories had often sung of broken hearts, or happy hearts—but never _crowded_ ones, never of hearts divided between a family forced out of reach and a new love full of alluring promises.

Sansa tried to reconcile the contradictory impulses, but it was too exhausting. She didn’t know if there was enough room in her heart to fully love more than just one thing. And she simply had no answer to give herself.

 

 

 

They sat in the gardens, Sansa’s head pillowed on Margaery’s lap. There was an indescribable calm in her chest as she lay there, gazing up at the serene blue sky dotted with puffs of white clouds, Margaery’s hands moving in gentle repetition above her. Margaery was fashioning a crown of flowers, threading dandelions together stem to stem as she hummed a soft wordless song. Everything was colored with that dreamy dazed feeling now, the Margaery-magic, her singular spell that sent all other thoughts out of Sansa’s head.

Even though that magic was faded, it was still potent. Sansa stroked the flowing fabric of Margaery’s dress with the back of her hand very slowly, stilled and spellbound just by the feeling. _This is the only thing that matters, right now._

And then Margaery leaned down over her with a smiling sound, her long brown curls falling down about them like a curtain, hiding them from the world and stopping out the light. She placed a soft, upside-down kiss on Sansa’s mouth, and Sansa stirred under her touch, breathing her in like a memory. In this sweet shelter, everything smelled of Margaery’s sun-soft hair and the delicate traces of her rosewater perfume. Sansa wanted to stay hidden forever.

She caught at Margaery’s hand when at last the older girl drew away, but Margaery resisted with a gentle laugh. “Come now,” she said, pulling Sansa into a sitting position. She placed the wreath of dandelions on Sansa’s head, smiling as she positioned it just so. Touched by Margaery’s usual talent for making even the most ordinary things beguiling, the brilliant yellow flowers made it seem as if Margaery were gifting her with a circlet of tiny suns.

“A crown, for my queen,” Margaery said softly, tucking a few fingers under Sansa’s chin.

The words that had once seemed so fanciful were now bloodied with a hard heavy weight, an understanding that Sansa had not previously possessed. So Sansa put a hand up to the pretty crown and adjusted it, hesitating.

And then she smiled. She supposed she would not mind being Margaery’s queen, just in their little world of two… for then wouldn’t Margaery be her queen, too? There was no harm in it, if it was only make-believe.

“A kiss, to show my thanks,” she said chastely, and leaned forward to claim her prize.

For even if the game they were playing was only pretend, there were many very real things for which she could thank Margaery… and so few ways to thank her, apart from the manner she had chosen. Despite all the many answers she did not have, Sansa knew that much was true. 

 _Yes._ That much, she knew, was true.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from _The Lady feeds Her little Bird_ , by Emily Dickinson ([x](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Lady_feeds_Her_little_Bird)).
> 
> _Edited 8/24/14._


	4. gather ye rosebuds while ye may

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Chapter warnings** : Very, very slight mention of dubious consent.

 

 

 

 

As Ser Dontos bent to kiss Sansa’s hand, the mingled smell of sour wine and sweat sprang at her like an alarm. Fighting the urge to recoil at its sudden sharpness, she drew a shallow breath, managing—only barely—to maintain her expression of bland courtesy. But even as she mentally berated herself for being so unladylike, Sansa couldn’t help but avert her head just a little. 

“My lady,” said the old knight as he straightened, voice hitching with the effort it took.

Nearly two weeks had passed since they’d last met, for Sansa had been too caught up in her new life to visit the godswood (though the thought had preyed on her, a dark endless worry through all those sunny days with Margaery). She wondered with a sudden flash of guilt and fear if perhaps Ser Dontos had been sending her messages that she had missed, as she had been so little in her chambers. What if one of those notes had been intercepted? 

But Ser Dontos did not mention any such message, and his ruddy face bore no signs of panic or urgency. She released one short breath to slow her thoughts, reminding herself what she needed to tell him.

 “Ser Dontos,” she said politely, in a little voice that hardly sounded like her own. How long it had been since she’d last been here in the godswood, standing in the cover of the trees with him—and how much everything had changed since then! But he knew nothing about that… not yet. That was what she had come here to say.

To look at him, standing there before her in his dented armor, made Sansa’s chest expand with grief, as if some bird were flapping its wings in her chest and forcing her wide with hollow space. The bright fool’s motley painted over his breastplate was already discolored. Not so long ago, she thought with a painful, scraping sort of feeling, he had been all the hope she had. Her only champion.

The battered knight in disguise did not seem to notice her expression, all those feelings she was struggling not to expose. Having long grown accustomed to his new appearance, he had adapted quickly to his demoted status, playing the fool without self-consciousness. _There is power in being overlooked_ , Sansa thought, looking at him,  _power in being invisible_. Dontos must have learned that—and he no longer seemed to care what people thought when they looked at him.

So now, instead of embarrassment, Ser Dontos wore a look of excitement. He licked his lips before he spoke. “My lady—I have excellent news. I have secured ship’s passage for you, and there are plans.” He grasped her hands and she could feel his hot eagerness, his perspiration. “Plans for you to leave King’s Landing.”

Sansa stared hard at Ser Dontos, at the broken blue veins that crossed his pockmarked face alongside faded scars showingthat he had once fought in actual battles on actual battlefields, by a man’s estimation, anyway. He was so _ugly_ , so unlike lovely Margaery. Yet if there was anything Sansa had learned from her Florian, it was that she could not judge possible allies on something as trivial as appearance. Beauty did not necessarily mean goodness: that much she had learned a thousand times over since coming to this place. 

But there were other plans in place for her now, and they did not involve sneaking out of King’s Landing like a traitor, nor did they require elaborate schemes and risky escape plans. “Thank you, my good Ser,” she said with determined courtesy, removing her hands from his grip. “You have always been so loyal to me, and so good. But other plans have been made for me since the last time we spoke.”

It was much harder to say those words than she’d expected. She stared hard at his glassy eyes, his blank look of incomprehension, and made herself go on. “I’ve become very close to the lady Margaery, the lady Margaery Tyrell, the King’s… newest betrothed.” 

“Your replacement,” Ser Dontos corrected, his aspect made blunt by drink and disbelief. The flatness of his voice made Sansa cringe. _He’s just an old fool. Why are you so afraid of what he thinks?_  

“The Lady Margaery has promised my hand to her elder brother, Willas. Lord Willas is the Tyrell heir.” She paused for breath, her chest tight. “I’m to marry him in Highgarden, after the lady Margaery weds the King and become Queen.”

There—she’d said it. Saying it had made it seem true, just for a moment. But the words faded quickly, taking all of their bold assurance with them, and that awful, airless feeling of unreality clung to her once more.

Ser Dontos stared at her for a long moment, and Sansa’s heart sank with dread to see his expression. Then the knight in fool’s motley began to shake his head vigorously. “No, no, no, my lady. No, you must not trust these Tyrells. You mustn’t.”

As strongly as Sansa tried to tell herself that he was only an old drunken fool, his words made her skin go cold. Her body felt like it might belong to somebody else, for she could not stop trembling. “Ser—Ser Dontos, I—”

“These Tyrells are only Lannisters with flowers,” he said, genuine desperation in his voice. The old knight grasped her hand tightly, squeezing as if that would make her understand. “You mustn’t believe what they promise you, my lady. Whatever they have promised you. You _mustn’t_.”

His words did not shock her the way he’d probably expected them to. Instead, the disguised knight’s warning met ringing echoes of fears Sansa had previously felt—felt with a suffocating immediacy ever since Margaery had first promised to keep her safe. They were doubts she’d kept tamped down with rising nervousness and the desperate anticipation that they would fade with time.

But there would be no more denying those fears, not when Ser Dontos’ words and the image of his jowly face stricken with panic had burned themselves into her mind. She pulled away from the fool almost convulsively, frantic to escape his grasp.

“Be as that may, Ser Dontos,” she said sharply, trying to keep her voice from shaking, “these are my plans.” She looked at him fiercely, needing to make him see. “This is to be my fate.”

 

 

 

Maybe if she repeated it enough, it would come true.

In the castle sept, she closed her eyes tightly and prayed fervently, murmuring silent verses on her knees before the Mother. These days Sansa was often in the sept, where it was quieter and more peaceful than anywhere else in the Red Keep. She could pray for hours if left alone, savoring the blank feeling that prayer gave her, as if like her body was both very heavy and very light, and nothing existed else of her but the words in her head.

Every visit, she lit candles before the Mother, the Maiden, the Crone, and the Stranger. Today she paused extra long before the last statue, its hewn anonymous features barely illuminated by the sept’s diffuse light. _Stranger, let me remain anonymous. Let me remain safe._ She remembered Ser Dontos in his anonymous fool’s motley, and prayed for him too.

When she had at last finished her prayers, tension in her chest alleviated in a way that experience told her would be only temporary, Sansa opened her eyes. She turned quietly to look at Margaery kneeling beside her and, for a moment, breathed in the way the light of the flickering thousands of candles painted the older girl’s face with a soft glow, how the fan of Margaery's eyelashes rested darkly on her cheeks. But the serene picture was gone when—suddenly—the older girl’s eyes fluttered open as if she had sensed Sansa’s attention.

Extending her neck to shake out her long brown hair, she tilted her head at Sansa with a light smile, and that smile came to her too fast. Margaery hadn’t really been praying, Sansa realized with a start, she had only been waiting for Sansa to finish.

A bad feeling settled over her, as if she had bitten into a fruit only to taste its blackened decay. She looked away quickly, needing a moment to herself. At length she turned back, took Margaery’s hand when it was extended to her, and followed the older girl out of the castle sept... but the feeling lingered, curling noxiously in the pit of her stomach.

She didn’t want to face why it bothered her so that Margaery had not been devout, or performing any sort of devotion. _It’s no crime not to be very religious_. But Sansa knew exactly why it made her feel the way she did.

Margaery had no need to pray. Why would she? Her marriage was secured, her ascendancy to the throne all but certain with the backing of her powerful family. Apart from her monstrous betrothed, there was nothing to trouble her—and apparently the reality of her intended husband wasn’t important enough for Margaery to ask for the Seven’s protection.

It was remarkable, really, that she and Margaery could be in the same place, looking at the same world from the same vantage, and see things so differently.  _I will pray for her_ , Sansa thought, her heart squeezing with a sick, rushing feeling. 

But what would Margaery ask the Seven for, if she _had_ been praying? Sansa did not know. And that, she thought with a genuine chill, _that_  was what troubled her most of all. 

 

 

 

Later, she felt Margaery’s hands under her chin, pressing with light insistence. The older girl had evidently noticed the cast over Sansa’s face, her evasive downturned eyes. “What is it, darling?”

She didn’t want to talk about this, or anything. “Nothing. It’s nothing.” She shook her head, arranging her features in a deliberately vague smile. Margaery’s face creased up into a tentative answering frown as she studied Sansa’s expression. “Are you certain?” the older girl asked, at last.

“Oh, yes.” Sansa nodded. Lying no longer troubled her, not when it was just a little lie. _And this_ is _only a little lie. A very, very little lie._

_Oh, Margaery._ Attentive, impetuous, laughing Margaery, wreathed in smiles in the morning, bold masked caresses in the day, tender kisses and silvery embraces at night. Covering Sansa’s eyes for some new surprise, hiding the world from her before revealing some small thing made magical by her focus. She was still, was ever, the only thing that could make Sansa forget everything else, even as it agonized Sansa to do so. It was so easy to put Margaery above everything else, slipping into her old habits of creating a fantasy world. _But that isn’t how the real world works. You can’t just ignore everything else_. She knew it too, she knew it so well—but, oh, it was tempting. It was always so tempting.

Margaery seemed different now. She was bright as a bird, lively and gay, in public. But perhaps she had tired of pushing Sansa’s limits, for she was no longer was so dramatically demonstrative among others. Gone were her heightened teasing actions; instead, she treated Sansa with a casual intimate possessiveness that betrayed more warmth (to Sansa’s always biased eye) than her previous dramatics ever could.

Now, too, the line between public and private was slipping. Where Margaery had previously gone seamlessly smiling from court to bedroom, a greater disconnect was growing between the girl Sansa saw in public and the girl Margaery was when she and Sansa were alone.

Maybe the Tyrell girl didn’t realize what she was telling Sansa with her actions. But every day that she relaxed in Sansa’s company, Sansa caught, with close sharp attention, tiny pieces of Margaery’s unspoken self—a girl who was not always charming and easy, but was tired sometimes, and showed how much effort it took to always appear so effortless. A girl who, after retiring for the evening, would sometimes settle into a chair and sit for nearly an hour without smiling or even saying a word, as if a light had gone out from behind her eyes. Only then would she recover something of her spark and smile, look warmly up at Sansa once again, and say something inviting and open her arms to her.

So as hungry as Sansa had been for this insight, this kind of look into Margaery’s inner workings, every new thing she learned about Margaery made her nervous. It made her feel almost as if the more she learned about this girl, the less she really knew her. 

She wanted Margaery when she was looking at Sansa sweetly and warmly, not when her mouth creased in displeasure because Sansa was not following her to bed quickly enough. She wanted Margaery’s genuine smile and startled laugh when they curled together in Margaery’s great bed, not Margaery’s too-easy smile in the castle sept, or the generic cheerful looks she exchanged with everyone in court.

It hurt her head to try to keep it all straight. But throughout everything, the one constant was how much she wanted this girl, almost— _almost_ —more than anything else.

“I have a surprise for you,” she said softly one day, making Margaery bend close to hear her, crinkling up her little nose at the tickling feeling of Sansa’s breath on her ear.

“You do?” Margaery whispered back, pulling away just a little. She was always so good with secrets, especially Sansa’s. 

“Can you get away?” Sansa said with surprising boldness, casting an eye around the garden court and people all around them. Usually she waited all day to have Margaery to herself, patiently, knowing that it was her due. But this was different. Today was different.

Margaery glanced about, too, and then inclined her head slightly. “I could—” She tipped her head to her right, indicating the path to the secluded corner where they sometimes snuck off during court hours for a few moments together.

Sansa bit her lip, testing her ground. “Your chambers?” Much to her surprise, it was with very little hesitation that Margaery tipped her head down into another sideways nod, before turning around with coy grace to face the rest of court.

When Margaery entered her chambers, having waited a decent amount of time before following Sansa up to her tower rooms, she wore an intrigued little smile. “Now what is this surprise?” she said, drawing forward expectantly.

“Sit down,” Sansa directed, a little breathless, from where she sat in the shade of the balcony. She’d meant for Margaery to sit across from her, but Margaery dropped down into the chair right beside her with a bold teasing look, and drew up close so that their knees touched. Sansa felt a warm ripple of heat in her chest, and the accompanying, indescribably keen feeling of something else she couldn’t name.

“What’s my surprise?” Margaery repeated coyly, her hand drawing a little closer. Once that would have flustered Sansa beyond words, but now she only gave a little laugh and placed Margaery’s hand firmly back onto the older girl’s lap.

“It’s not _that_ ,” she said lightly, and her voice did not betray how her stomach twisted in knots.

From beneath her chair she drew out a little wood harp, of the kind she’d played as a little girl in Winterfell. Margaery was looking at her, curiosity all over her face. Sansa swallowed and strummed a few opening bars, the murmuring harp strings rippling their notes into the air with calm majesty. “I have something for you,” she said.

She caught her breath, mind straining with focus, trying to keep all the notes and words straight in her head. And then she began to sing.

She had been very careful to practice with the Tyrell court musician, the Blue Bard, only when Margaery was otherwise occupied. It had been easy to swear him to secrecy about their covert practices, flirting a little and insinuating airy nothings about some secret crush (tall, dark, and handsome, with a gorgeous mustache). She’d worried that perhaps the court had noticed their music sessions—in a court that used gossip as currency, it would be difficult for anything to go unnoticed—but from the looks of it Margaery had not had word of this from anyone. And Sansa was pleased.

Her song was a very old southern love song, rich in metaphor, with words that were deceptively simple. She’d chosen this song because it had a strange richness to it, like mahogany, an amber quality that was full and dark and deep. When she’d sung as a young girl, she’d always chosen the pretty songs to suit her high voice. But this song, so different from any of that, had spoken to something ancient in her when she had first heard it one darkening, still, sultry afternoon in the corner of the gardens. It was low, meant to be sung by a man, but not out of her range. The spare stanzas were about roots that grew deep, and a love that took root even deeper.

It had made her think of Margaery. She had never heard a song that made her think of one person before. Before, all the songs had only ever been about the _idea_ of love—and that, for Sansa, had once been enough.

Margaery watched her with liquid eyes, looking from Sansa’s hands stroking the strings up to Sansa’s face, with a tender kind of wonder spreading across her own face. Sansa felt herself going warm, brushed with embarrassment at being watched like that, being looked at in a way that she’d never been looked at before. It was very different all of a sudden, singing for an audience of just one.

She sang the words and they were warm in her throat and the way they came out was stronger, softer, painted with some feeling she had not heard herself yet voice. It was all so different from how she had practiced. She almost couldn’t look at Margaery any more. It was, suddenly, almost too much.

Then it was finished. Sansa lowered her hand and rested it on the curve of the harp. Waiting.

Margaery was gazing at her with a look that was not quite a smile, which from the girl who was always smiling was truly something.

“You learned all of that?” Margaery said at last, her rosy mouth twisting curiously. She put one hand gently on the harp strings, still quivering with their released last chord, as if wondering at all they had just done and told her. 

 “I learned it all for _you_ ,” Sansa corrected softly, chest heaving with an aftershock of nervousness and warmth. Was Margaery reacting as Sansa’d expected her to, or was she surprised? It was a little of both—Sansa couldn’t remember, suddenly, now that she had finished and all thoughts had been driven from her head with dazed and dreamy heat. Now she was the one who couldn’t take her eyes off Margaery, stuck on every tiny movement of the older girl’s face: Margaery, who looked now as if she was trying to answer a question she’d posed to herself.

“You did?” the older girl repeated, and the wonder in her voice was not teasing, put-on, or play-acting. It was genuine. Margaery closed her hands over Sansa’s, still not quite smiling. She looked down for a moment, then brought Sansa’s hands up to her mouth and kissed them, the trembling fingers.

Every nerve in Sansa’s body erupted, tingling, as if she had just stepped into an open flame. 

“We’d better go back to everyone else,” she whispered, staring at her hands enclosed in Margaery’s. She needed time alone, needed to think about what had just happened. Surprise coiled in her stomach like a living thing—surprise that she had been brave enough to do what she’d done, and that Margaery had responded as she had.

“Yes,” said Margaery, at last. She gently released Sansa’s hand, and put her own hand to her throat, drawing in a little breath like an afterthought. As if automatically, with none of her usual coyness, she added, “They might start to wonder.”

But she didn’t move. Sansa’s cheeks burned. She didn’t move, either. After one painstaking, paper-thin moment, Margaery reached forward with unusual restraint, and brushed back a strand of Sansa’s hair, her fingers lingering at the side of Sansa’s face.

She closed her eyes, anticipating what would happen with a certainty that was wholly unfamiliar. When Margaery’s lips closed on hers, the heat in her chest expanded until she thought she might burst.

 _So—is this what it feels like_? Sansa thought dazedly, the thought coming in little fragmented starbursts, shifting her body up around the wood harp still cradled awkwardly in her lap. She reached for Margaery, feeling the familiar weight of Margaery's hair falling across her face, with that familiar delicate rosewater smell.

_Is this what it feels like, to make somebody love you?_

Sometimes Sansa noticed Margaery’s radiant happiness and thought, with a start of pleasant, strange surprise, _Am_ I _the cause of that?_ Being at the center of Margaery’s attention, when it happened—as it had during her song and all that time after—was a singular experience that made Sansa feel brave and melting and reckless and uncertain all at once.

And, _oh_ , it felt good. She had wanted to give Margaery something, not only for the pleasure of giving, but also as a test to see how it would be received—and Margaery had received it better than Sansa had thought she ever would. But every time she remembered the look on Margaery’s face, the star-caught clarity of her lover’s almost-smile, Sansa caught herself. She could not forget.

If only Margaery had been less beautiful, less kind, less soft, and curving, and gentle, and receptive—if only she had been less easy to love. Whenever Sansa tried to look objectively at things as they were with the two of them, she felt little fingers of panic dig in under the edges of it all. Everything outside of Margaery was ugly, painful, and hurt to think of; why would she _ever_ want to think about any of that, ever again?

But there was ugliness in Margaery, too—Sansa thought she could see it, emerging, under the surface, whenever Margaery’s easy beauty slipped, whenever she stopped speaking, stopped smiling. Sometimes it made Sansa feel better to recognize that. But other times… other times… _  
_

 

 

If things had been different, if Sansa wasn’t constantly surrounded by women who traded in gossip and spoke in pointed whispers, perhaps she wouldn’t feel so consistently wary of the outside world. Perhaps she wouldn’t have reason to think longingly of much easier it was to be alone with Margaery, nor put quite so much weight on what they had between them. 

But every day she sat with the Tyrell ladies in court and the outside world was always there, an ever-present litany of news and gossip and other boring and horrible tidings that Sansa would have preferred never to hear.

Margaery swanned over to their little circle, glowing after her latest series of morning audiences. “How is the needlework today, ladies?” she asked, sending her vivacious gaze around to all of them.

“Very good today, cousin,” Elinor rejoined, speaking as usual for them all. “Look at all we’ve finished. And _I’ve_ got a love-knot, for my lover,” she said, holding up the day’s project, a jousting token for her squire betrothed. She waggled her eyebrows suggestively, and Megga burst into giggles. Sansa smiled too.

“Nothing so interesting here, dear Margaery,” sighed Alla, holding up her work. “Just some flowers. Not golden, I wanted to try something new… so I chose green. Do you like the color?”

“Why, I don’t think I could have chosen a lovelier shade if I tried,” Margaery said sweetly. “Excellent work, as usual.” Her eyes fell to Sansa, and Sansa gave her only a little smile and looked back down at her work.

“My lady,” Margaery said with a sudden chivalrous little flourish, as if inspired by nothing in particular to make the gesture. She took Sansa’s hand and pressed a fleeting kiss to it with a knightly bow and telling look in her eye, before turning and wheeling away to meet her approaching uncle. Blushing like a fool, Sansa immediately dropped her hands back into her lap, and studied them with exaggerated focus. No amount of her admirable acting, though, could completely veil the smile that twitched at the corners of her mouth.

Elinor didn’t waste a moment. She looked at Sansa, her eyes very bright. “Our cousin really has taken to you, hasn’t she, Sansa?”

Sansa looked up, something sharp catching in her chest. “I suppose she has,” she said, not wanting to yield an inch.

Elinor looked at her boldly, before speaking with the bluntness that Sansa weakly supposed must be a trait of all southern ladies. “Oh, she _must_ be very fond of you, my dear. She used to take one or two of us to bed with her every night. Now it’s you, only you.”

It was as if she had reached over and torn Sansa’s clothes open to expose her naked heart. Sansa struggled to arrange her features in a light carefree look. “Lady Margaery is very kind,” she said coolly, looking down at her work. She had kept her head in much more terrifying situations than this, _don’t forget_. But she had not expected this… not from them. _They know, they all know_ _…_

“Isn’t she, though?” Megga replied, shooting Elinor a significant look. The eldest Tyrell cousin stifled a sharp giggle, raising a hand to her mouth as her chestnut hair fell around her shoulders. 

Alla, sweet Alla, glanced at the two of them disapprovingly and made a critical little noise. She leaned forward, putting her hand on top of Sansa’s, and her brown eyes were firm. “We are very happy,” she said gently, “that you have found our cousin’s company so pleasing.”

Unsettled so badly that she was almost shaking, Sansa murmured something so wan and innocuous that she forgot it even as she was saying it. She smiled, managing with an effort to make it convincing, but the insinuation was not lost on her. These days, they never were.

 

 

 

And that night, as she was dining alone with Margaery and her brother, a strange thing happened. It was the first time Sansa had seen Loras since he’d helped her with her drawing in the gardens, and she felt almost unreasonably happy at the gallant courtesy with which he seemed to have accepted her newfound closeness with his sister. Now that they were all three together, he didn’t question her presence at their table, just smiled at her in a polite way that didn’t seem to reach his beautiful long-lashed blue eyes, and began telling her about the latest developments from the jousting track.

Theirs was a casual table, and they ate unattended by servants, reaching over each other whenever they wanted something. At length, in a lull in the conversation, Margaery rose and went to the sideboard to get a decanter of pale Dornish wine. She stopped to refill her brother’s glass and then, coming around the table, asked, “Sansa?”

“Oh—yes, please,” Sansa said politely, and as she turned to offer her glass, Margaery surprised her by suddenly leaning down and kissing her full on the mouth. It was an easy kiss, its familiarity telling of all the dozens of the kisses they’d shared before, and Sansa warmed easily, unconsciously to it, leaning close for more. But all too quickly, Margaery (always the tease) pulled away with a delicate half-note of a laugh. “Oh, and your glass?”  

Smiling in spite of herself, Sansa did as she was asked, and turned her eyes back to the table. It was then that she suddenly saw Loras, sitting there with his eyes locked on the two of them—on what they had just done. His handsome face was a ruin of frozen anger, and something darker as well. His blue eyes were almost black, lips parted as if mid-grimace, giving him the look of a man who was unwell, even ill.

“Well, now I suppose you have everything,” he said to his sister, shortly. He pushed back his chair with a loud abrupt sound and stalked out into the garden. Sansa turned to Margaery, who had set down her glass and gazed after her brother with a stricken look. “Loras!” she said, following him hastily down the stairs, a rustling figure in her blue silk dress. “Loras, _wait_ , I—” Her voice died out as she followed him into the shadows of the dark green night.

Sansa stared after them, her head abuzz with shock and disbelief. _How on earth could that have angered him_? She could hear the indistinct pattern of voices from the garden: Loras’ raised, anguished, Margaery’s lower, pleading, apologizing, placating. 

Sansa fidgeted with the table settings nervously, her appetite gone. She had no idea how long she sat there, the painstaking minutes subsiding into indefinite amounts of time. Every horrible scenario she could imagine flashed before her eyes, and in every one, Loras’ terrible reaction was all _her fault._

At long last the siblings returned, arm in arm, emerging shadows first from the garden like two figures from a storybook illustration. Margaery was wearing a tired smile, and her brother pressed his mouth tightly closed.

“Lady Sansa,” he said, giving her a stiff polite bow by means of farewell. “Pardon me,” he said, and there was a look of exhausted apology on his face as he went briskly to the door behind her and exited into the hall. Margaery watched him leave with inscrutable blue eyes, her chest rising and falling with measured little breaths, until the door had shut and her brother’s footsteps faded long away. With a great sigh she folded herself into the chair beside Sansa.

“Margaery…” Sansa began uncertainly.

“Please, don’t be upset,” Margaery said, in a voice that was stretched thin. She reached for a handful of blackberries and began to eat them slowly, sliding them into her mouth one by one though it was clear she wasn’t tasting them. Sansa stared at her hands, put on edge by this casual show that didn’t quite mask the wealth of unease Margaery was so obviously feeling.

“Loras,” Margaery began at last, without any perfunctory explanation, “has recently lost someone very close to him.” She stared at the tablecloth with blank focus. “And he hasn’t fully recovered. He’s been very sad, and much changed since then.”

“I’m… I’m sorry,” ventured Sansa, feeling the awkward inadequacy of her own words. She’d thought she’d already known this about Loras, but it was interesting to hear it confirmed by Margaery. The older girl shook her head almost impatiently. “It has been very difficult for him to continue with daily life. He’s always been a valued part of our family, but he is a little lost right now.”

“And he…when he saw us…” Sansa fixed her with a tentative questioning look.

Margaery looked back at her, blue eyes a little defensive. “Well. Loras misses this person very much, but it’s been a long time and I wasn’t thinking—” She paused. “I hadn’t thought that learning of the… the fondness I have for you would upset him so. But, as you saw, I was mistaken.”

“Oh, that’s terrible,” Sansa whispered. But horribly—selfishly—it was Margaery’s other words that caught every fiber of her attention. _The fondness I have for you._  

Margaery gave a short shrug, looking down at the table. “Yes, but that’s how things happen. It’s been four months now, and still he isn’t well. I don’t understand it,” she added, a note of petulance tinging her voice.

“Four months?” Detaching for one moment from her previous worries, Sansa furrowed her brow as she made the connection. “Are you speaking of…Lord Renly, my lady?”

Margaery gave her a curious look. “Yes, I am. My brother and my late husband were very close. It was,” and her voice had a little bite to it, “quite well known.” Almost mechanically she raised another blackberry to her lips and ate it, fingers twisting moodily with the raw silk tablecloth. The fruit was very ripe, and her lips had taken on a dark purplish cast where the juices stained them. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand and took a sip of wine, eyes fixed unseeing on the shaded gardens where she and her brother had walked only minutes before.

Sansa understood suddenly. Ser Loras’ drawn grief, his shadowed eyes, the way he’d spoken to her in the gardens with that palpable sadness right there under the courtly veneer—all of that made sense, now. _Oh, Loras._ She could not even begin to imagine, how that must be, how he must…

But she must be a very terrible, selfish person indeed, for all she could think about was the _other_ thing that Margaery had said.

She sat back in her chair, not looking at Margaery, right beside her and staring straight ahead as if she too could find the answers she was looking for in that sweet-scented darkness. _You mean, they were close like you and I are close?_ she wanted to ask. _Is that what you mean?_ But she was too afraid that Margaery would turn to look at her with those pale eyes and say blankly, _And how is that?_

And Sansa had a thousand answers that she knew she could never voice, and just that one burning question she feared she might never be able to ask.

_Tell me, Margaery, what do you mean?_

She went back to Margaery’s chambers, and this night she had something to prove, an unspoken doubt that demanded an answer. Margaery let Sansa take her with soft kisses all over, each one bolder than the last, and that stretched into hours of exploring each other’s bodies, stretching into one another, pressing close and deliciously hot, foreign and intimate all at once.

There was an unfamiliar tension in Margaery tonight, an unusual stress that Sansa traced to the conflict with her brother. She could feel how upset Margaery was from the scene she had caused (because it really all had been her fault, hadn’t it? —Sansa would never have kissed her outright like that, never). Yes, her brother had always seemed to be Margaery’s weak spot…one of her very few. But Sansa thought she was beginning to know a few others, and suspected even more.

Mapping the older girl’s body with her hands, without stopping her kisses and hot attentions, she plotted all the familiar landmarks and secret paths she’d come to know. Here was a little mark under Margaery’s right breast, the traveled span of her curved stomach… the minute freckles like a dusting of cinnamon across the tanned sides of her graceful arms, and the tender sweep of her shoulder blade, sloping down into her harp-shaped back. And here, due south, was a matching chocolate-colored mole in the dimpled juncture of one of her creamy thighs. This was Sansa’s favorite. She could make Margaery come apart just by lavishing herself on that mole—and she did.

After, Margaery reached up as if to turn Sansa over, to lay her out like a banquet spread for her turn, but Sansa didn’t let her. She sought release of a different kind tonight. She pushed forward, not saying a word, and relentlessly began to conquer Margaery’s body once again.

For the first time, after they’d completely finished, Margaery didn’t smile at her right away, didn’t immediately begin mouthing pleased and pleasing words to mark a job well done. Instead she closed her eyes, breathing heavily, extending her neck as she stretched her head back against the pillow; and she sighed, hands relaxing from where they’d tightened, clasping, at the rosy peaks of her own breasts. Sansa lowered herself onto her elbows beside the older girl, watching her almost warily. (She knew that Margaery had liked it—it wasn’t that. But what Margaery would do now, how she would react, what she would _say_ : that was always the most telling thing of all.)

Margaery opened her eyes and looked at her for a long time, eyes star-caught and drowsy, as if she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure exactly what. At long last, the older girl reached out a finger to gently stroke Sansa’s cheek, one thumb brushing across the midpoint of Sansa's lips. “Sansa…” she said, eyes silvery and careful.

The older girl drew in her breath and exhaled slowly. In a diminished voice she said, so softly that Sansa had to strain to hear her, “Thank you.”

That was all she said. Heart pounding, Sansa lowered her head onto Margaery’s chest and the older girl drew her fingers through her hair. In the silent soft afterglow, their breathing mingled, chests rising and falling in tandem. Margaery had a strange way of communicating but Sansa was, at last, beginning to understand her.

Or so she hoped. She could only hope.

They were going arm in arm through the gardens on their way back from the sept, walking quickly without speaking, when their trail made an abrupt turn. Suddenly they were longer on their idyllic shaded path, but in the brilliant sun of an open walkway. In the moment before she stepped out of the shadows and into the sun, Sansa lifted her head—and felt her blood turn to ice when she saw who was standing there. The sunlight caught the gold in his clothing and lit him from behind, for one moment, so that he glowed like some burning divinity. When the figure had again become a person, aided by her eyes adjusting to the bright flood of light, Sansa felt like she couldn’t breathe.

But Joffrey looked at her as if he did not know her, and his potent sneer in her direction visibly subsided into nothing more than an expression of cool disdain in front of Margaery.

 _Margaery_ , for whom Joff actually appeared to be consciously preening. He tilted his head back, striding forward as if the very ground offended him and needed to be punished with his steps.

“My queen,” he said in what sounded like a deepened version of his usual voice, looking to his betrothed and ignoring Sansa almost completely. “I take it that you are not… occupied?”

Sansa dropped her eyes. Behind Joff stood his Kingsguard, including Meryn Trant, the knight with cruel dark eyes who had stripped off her clothes and beaten her that day in the throne room. She went hard inside at the memory—she would have given anything to forget, to be anywhere other than right here. _Oh gods, why?_

Margaery shook back her curtain of long hair and beamed at her betrothed, as radiant as the sunlight around them. _She’s beautiful_ , Sansa thought with a sudden twist in her stomach. _She is so beautiful_. And Joffrey was too, in his golden crown that caught all the light and brought out the hard blue of his eyes. The crown on his head matched the gold rose that Margaery wore at her waist, its vines circling her body with filigreed thorns.

“Oh, the Lady Sansa and I were just walking. It’s such a lovely day, don’t you think?” Margaery said, beatific. She dropped Sansa’s hand without drawing attention to what she was doing. Sansa kept her face studiously blank.

“I don’t know if I approve of the company you keep,” Joffrey said sharply, tipping his head at Sansa as if she were something to scrape off the bottom of his shoe. He raised his voice. “Traitors’ daughters and trash like that.”

Sansa stiffened involuntarily, but didn’t let her expression change. It wasn’t worth it. She had to tell herself twice. _There’s nothing Joff can do to you that he hasn’t already done._

Margaery made a teasing little moue of her mouth and shook her head, her voice affectionate and streaked with laughter. “Darling, a king is always gracious.” She paused, giving him a sweet coaxing look. “You can show the Lady Sansa just how much of a king you are by apologizing for what you've just said.”

And, stunningly, the point of Joff’s cruel mouth softened, and he _nodded_ at Margaery as if to concede the point. He swung his eyes pointedly in Sansa’s direction, and inclined his sleek golden head at her in a begrudging kind of way.

“Your Grace,” said Sansa, finding it difficult to form the words when she’d been rendered almost speechless. She dipped into a deep curtsy, glad for the brief respite from having to meet Joffrey’s eyes.

Margaery granted her betrothed with a glowing, congratulatory smile, and to Sansa’s recurrent shock it was evident how much Joffrey brightened under her approval. “Now, my king,” said the Tyrell girl, moving forward, “what is it you wanted to tell me?”

Not missing a beat, Margaery hooked her arm through Joffrey’s and sailed away with him through the gardens, moving beside him as gracefully as a swaying willow branch. His Kingsguard wheeled about to follow them, clanking away in their armor, and none of them spared a single look for Sansa.

She couldn’t move until the royal party had made it well down the path, very far away from her. Standing there behind them like a forgotten toy, staring after their receding figures with a terrified feeling and heart skipping painfully in her chest, she was reminded again of exactly how little she mattered, to anyone.

Perhaps even to Margaery.

The next time they met (that evening, as it was), a reproachful, dull silence was as much rebellion as Sansa could muster. Petty and childish as that might be, it was the only thing that stopped the lump in her throat from swelling any larger than it already was. She’d spent the remainder of the day sitting listlessly in her room, staring out the window with a book forgotten in her hands, feeling as if she might be ill.

“Come, now,” Margaery said, looking at her, taking in the sullen press of her mouth. If she picked up on Sansa’s expression, her steady, light tone gave no indication. “Shall I brush your hair?”

Sansa usually loved this, as Margaery very well knew. So she nodded, trying not to pout, and came close to sit at the older girl’s feet. Margaery’s knees pressed up against her back as she pulled Sansa’s long red hair through her hands, applying long strokes of the brush. It was comfortable, and in other situations would be calming, but Sansa’s head felt dull. Margaery’s ministrations reminded her of her lady mother, and suddenly Sansa felt an unpleasant prickling rush of heat under her clothes, and an awful tightening in her throat. “Thank you, that will do,” she managed, pulling away, and Margaery looked her almost crossly.

“Are you sure?” she asked. 

Sansa nodded evasively. “Very well,” Margaery said with a sigh. It _was_ late, after all, and she looked tired. With an air of aggrieved finality, she moved to her writing table where she lit the tapers and pointedly absorbed herself in arranging the materials there. Restless, Sansa sprawled on the chair opposite her, craning her neck to watch as Margaery readied her writing paper, quill and ink, stamp and round of glossy emerald-colored wax.

Sensing Sansa’s close attention, Margaery glanced up and gave her a patient smile. But Sansa only frowned in response, averting her eyes and fidgeting in her chair like a child. Margaery gave her a controlled look, before turning to her paper and beginning to write. _Who is that letter to? Is she writing to Joffrey?_

“Sansa, would you play me a song?” the older girl asked sweetly, at last. “Music would make writing so much less dull.”

“I don’t feel like playing,” Sansa said shortly.

“Sansa.” Margaery’s voice sounded like an impatient mother’s scolding. _But you are not my mother, Margaery. You’re not anything to me._

She said nothing, and Margaery sighed once again. She went back to writing with renewed attention, gazing at the page with more intensity than any simple missive could require.

Clearing her throat, Sansa found her voice at last. It came out, thin and sharp. “What did Joffrey have to tell you?” 

“What?” 

“Today, in the gardens.” She was half-trying to make light of the matter, but it was obviously a loaded question.

There was a pause before Margaery answered. She was looking with concentration at her page. “Oh, yes. Nothing, really. He’s set up some hunt or other, with a tourney to follow. He’s very excited about getting my opinion, as he wants to show me off before his court.” She punctuated her remark with a little shrug, and went back to writing without looking at Sansa.

Sansa paused, her very breath feeling icy in her chest. If they were going to dance around the issue, then it was up to her to advance the topic.

“You know,” she faltered, nerves humming right down to her very fingertips, “I… I care very much for you.” She reminded herself that it was only _yesterday_ that Margaery had confessed to having a certain “fondness” for her, so it was not so unusual to say that she cared for Margaery in turn. (And yet, she couldn’t ignore the echoes of declarations of love from stories and songs that were sounding in her head. _It’s not supposed to feel like this_ _. Y_ _ou’re supposed to be sure, certain the other person will say it back_ ).

“And you know I feel the same,” Margaery replied immediately. She looked gently at Sansa, quill perched in her fingers. But before Sansa could say anything, she went on. “But you know, this is how things are.”

She said it so lightly, Sansa was stunned. Who could have known it would be so devastating to hear a statement of fact, something that she knew perfectly well to be true, something she already thought about nearly every single day?

“And how is that?” she blurted, in her last gasp of angry breath before the tears caught up with her. Her voice was very loud. She wanted Margaery to say it. She wanted to hear her say it. 

The older girl furrowed her brow lightly. “Joffrey is my betrothed.” She tried a neutral, cool smile, but it came off a little patronizing. “We are going to be married. When he wants my company, he gets it.” 

Which told Sansa exactly nothing. _So what about you and me, and all this between us?_ And that thought had its deeper, darker echo— _does that mean you will always put him before me? . . . Or is that even a question in your mind, Margaery? Do you even account for me at all when you’re weighing your life as it stands?_

“When he wants my company,” Margaery repeated, “he gets it.” She shrugged lightly, in that deflecting way that Sansa had come to despise. “It’s his due, after all… the least a woman can offer her betrothed is the time of day and the blessing of her company, don’t you think?”

It irritated Sansa to no end that she could talk about things like this this way, as if it were a matter of light court banter and nothing more, as if all men were the same and courtship were always an amusing matter. Margaery’s ability to dance around any topic had once made her seem charming and astute, but Sansa had never imagined this opaqueness would extend to questions that usually required emotional candor.

“And me?” Sansa said it before she could stop herself.

Margaery put her quill down, looking puzzled, as if unsure how to answer a question asked so bluntly. Sansa felt a sinking feeling of despair as she looked at her lover’s expression. _Have you ever really thought about this before, Margaery?_ She was beginning to regret asking, especially in such a direct way (where had that even come from? She’d never been so forthright with another person before). Margaery had, after all, been quite transparent about how she compartmentalized her doings with men and women. Perhaps she had never really thought about it before. Perhaps she saw Sansa as no different from any of the dalliances in her past.

Margaery was gazing at her with exquisite composure, as deliberate as a queen presiding over a filled court. “My family and I want to welcome you into the Tyrell fold, Sansa. We want to make you one of us.”

She hated it when Margaery talked about her family. _I wasn’t asking about your_ family _._ And it made her jealous, too, for the most obvious, and the most basic of reasons.

“And that’s really all you want with me?” Sansa countered incredulously, recalling Ser Dontos’ words with a fatal shiver of recognition. She was being stupid; she was being so stupid, bringing things up like this. This was about much more than just the two of them, she knew—it was a story written in a grander scale, a story of the Tyrell empire, and her own family’s political shortsightedness and inability to see past the guardianship of the North.

But when it came down to it, when she was sitting here in front of Margaery demanding the truth, was that _really_  all it came down to? Or was she wrong in thinking that not all dramas required the scope of a kingdom, and could be limited to just two people, even as much as the other girl seemed to be trying to deny it?

Margaery’s eyes snapped with anger. “Sansa, that’s quite enough,” she said sharply. “My family and I are doing everything we can for you. I won’t talk about it any more.”

It was the first time she had raised her voice to Sansa and, a little shocked, Sansa fell silent. She looked down at the bed without saying a word, and knew that she must appear chastened. But inwardly, she was glad. Seeing that she could provoke such a reaction from Margaery was no answer in and of itself—but it was, at least, some little part of the end she sought. 

The older girl again turned her eyes down at her letters. She wore a drawn, wary, smoldering look on her face, and Sansa knew that there would be no further conversation on the matter.

She took a deep breath, suddenly sorry she had brought it up. She let Margaery write for several minutes, watching the older girl’s defensive posture leak away until she could tell that Margaery would let her apologize if she tried, and was convincing enough at doing it.

Because she could not get Margaery to respond to her words—not what she had to say, anyway—she chose the one way she knew would make Margaery react. She rose and drew up behind the older girl. Bending close, Sansa brushed Margaery’s hair gently to the side so it fell on the shoulder of her mint silk dressing gown, and pressed her mouth to the older girl’s neck.

“Oh,” said Margaery, turning from her letters with a sharp, appeased exhale of breath, “so _that’s_ what you wanted.”

It was so far from everything Sansa wanted that it was almost laughable. It wasn’t what she really wanted, not even close, but it was good enough. Let Margaery pretend. For now, it would be good enough.

She had begun to wonder, after the first few weeks spent in Margaery’s bed, if it might get tiring to explore each other’s bodies—but to her wonder and surprise, it had continued to be good, very good. They didn’t always make love, not every night; sometimes they would just hold one another, lying together in the companionable darkness. It wasn’t always so complicated. Sometimes it was enough just to touch another person, to feel good and make them feel good too.

And this time, surprisingly, it was excellent. All of Sansa’s unvoiced anxiety, her hazy strain of worry, all that rolled out of her when Margaery hooked her fingers under her hips, and touched Sansa with her fingers and her mouth until Sansa could not contain herself any longer, could not remain earthbound. She arched her hips into the air, hipbones unfurling like wings, closing her eyes tight with the unutterable sensation spiraling out from Margaery’s temperate kiss there. 

Margaery took her to the edge, seeking Sansa’s peak with an energy that smacked of relief that they were no longer talking about things Margaery didn’t want to talk about. But there was soon little enough space in Sansa’s mind for such critical thoughts—no doubt exactly as Margaery had intended, confirmed by the flashing look in her eyes when she looked sharply, triumphantly up from the sensitive juncture of Sansa’s thighs. Then she reeled Sansa back in to lie panting and sighing once again in her arms, brought down to earth in a more resplendent and airy state, weightless and glowing in her body at the same time. Margaery pressed her fingers forcefully against the flat smooth bone between Sansa’s breasts, lying the palm of her hand out flat so that they both felt the heart racing in Sansa’s chest, the fluttering heartbeat doubled between her hand and Sansa’s body held so tightly together.

Sansa took a deep breath, like a cry, and shook as she let it go. It was a sobbing sighing sort of cry, stained with of all the helplessness of relief, but it felt good. It did.

With a gratified, forceful look, Margaery stroked her face— _If you think that’s all that will make me stop asking you questions about this, about us, you’re wrong_ , was the last thought that crossed Sansa’s blissfully blank mind—and they went to sleep.

But her anxiety returned to her in her dreams, which were grey with unease. She dreamed that she was making love to Margaery, touching her all over, and that they were on the bed, both as naked as the day they were born. Margaery sighed a golden sigh, arching up as if her body were liquid under Sansa’s hands. “ _Oh_ ,” she said, and Sansa blushed with it, feeling her lover’s words fill her as completely as anything ever had.

Then she looked up and there in the corner of the room, leaning forward in his chair, was Joffrey. His face was distended in a lascivious red leer as he watched them. He leaned forward, hands on his knees. He had been there all along.

Sansa had never felt so exposed—the episode in the throne room had been nothing compared to this feeling, _nothing_. She wanted to scream, but no sound would come out for her voice was stuck, strangled in her throat. Margaery, beneath her, reclined her long swan-like neck against the bed, blue eyes widening with questions. Choking in panic Sansa pulled her hands to her own breasts, seeking frantically to cover herself, but she was all tangled in Margaery, their knees interlocking, ankles twisted together. She couldn’t get free—couldn’t—

“What’s wrong, darling?” Margaery cried, her voice coming as if from far away. She reached up to stroke Sansa’s breasts, her sternum, her muted throat comfortingly. Cringing in fear and confusion, Sansa raised one hand to point at Joffrey, who reclined in his chair without any embarrassment, staring right back at her with a sick glittering smirk. Margaery pulled herself onto one elbow and craned her head around. And when she had looked, she turned back to Sansa, and she only smiled a horrible smile. “Oh, him? Don’t worry. He’s been there all along.”

Sansa shrank back. Her skin was hot and tingling, and everywhere it was touching Margaery’s skin. She tried to sit back but Margaery was in front of her, having sat up faster than a human should. “All along,” repeated Margaery, sing-song. Her fingers tightened around Sansa’s throat, and her nails were sharp as knives. And from behind her, she felt other hands snake around her body, clammy and burning—and she knew it was _him_. His body was as hard as armor, and cold, too. As he pulled her naked body back against his, her nipples stiffened, the juncture of her legs erupted in heat—and Margaery with her hands on Sansa’s throat, breasts brushing against her breasts, tightened her grip, lips falling open in an ecstatic sigh, and then she _smiled_ …

 

She awoke drenched in sweat, eyes snapping wide open. She had to calm herself for a long moment, breathing like a horse fresh from the joust. The room she was in was not murky gray and hellishly long and empty as it had been in her dream. It was contained, finite, and softly illuminated by the pale moon streaming in the open balcony. Real Margaery lay beside her, the curved S of her body turned away into the pillows, silky brown hair falling over her face.

It was a dream. Only a dream.

Sansa stumbled out of bed and went to the dressing table, hastily splashing some water from the basin onto her face. She wrapped one of Margaery’s flowing robes about her and crossed to the balcony, shaking.

In the dove grey light before dawn, she sat staring at the gardens as the cover of mist lifted and burned away in the morning sun. _Is it true what they say about dreams? Would you do that to me, Margaery? Could you ever do that to me?_

At last, when the hours had passed into morning, behind her came soft sleepy footsteps.

“You’re up so early,” Margaery said, drowsiness still in her voice. The stone would still be cool under her bare feet as she crossed to Sansa; soon the entire balcony would be warmed by the sun, captured in its unforgiving light.

Sansa nodded neutrally. She didn’t say anything.

Margaery folded herself down into a chair, stretched and yawned. “I think I’d like oranges for breakfast,” she said, half to herself. She looked up at Sansa, and smiled. “You like those, especially with…”

“Margaery…”

She was caught by a sudden, unexpected image of the soft skin under Margaery’s breasts, purpled from the marks of Joffrey’s fingers. Her stomach clenched. _I’m scared for you, and I’m scared for me._  

“You shouldn’t marry him,” she said quietly. Her fingers were gripping the arms of her chair so tightly that it hurt.

Margaery turned her head, the very picture of mild surprise. “Well. I can’t say that’s what I was expecting to hear first thing in the morning.”

She didn’t say anything, blood rushing in her ears, hands clamped around the chair arms. She hadn’t said anything about Joffrey to Margaery since she had given the truth to both her and her grandmother. This certainly must seem like it was coming out of the blue, but it made perfect sense to her. It was not something that could be left unsaid.

“Couldn’t this wait until after breakfast?” Margaery coaxed with a smile.

Sansa flushed. “Margaery, I’m being serious,” she said desperately.

“And so am I,” her lover responded, her voice challengingly light. 

She gritted her teeth, frustrated. This was all wrong. She was doing it all wrong. She should have waited for a better moment, a better time—and yet the words had come tumbling out, the feelings unavoidable. Her sleepless hours were catching up to her; her head felt filled with wispy strands of thoughts that refused to come together. But she could not take back what she had said. Now all she could do was keep going.

“I just…” she struggled.

Margaery reached out and touched Sansa’s shoulder gently. “Sansa. There isn’t any use in talking about this. Why bother?”

The Tyrell girl wore a slight frown, but her eyes were clear and her expression was resolute, as if for her the matter was completely closed and not worth discussing. It was just—it was if they were playing a game and Sansa was the only one who knew the real stakes, at least as far as Joffrey was concerned. And as much as she tried to impart this to Margaery, the older girl would not hear her.

“He’ll probably pin you down—and hurt you,” she blurted out in frustration. She was being cruel, but she couldn’t understand why Margaery wasn’t listening. 

The older girl looked taken aback, and then genuinely displeased. She sat back a little in her chair, arranging the hem of her robe with a pained look. “What an unpleasant conversation to wake up to, Sansa. Really, I…”

Sansa could feel her mouth tightening, and she couldn’t stop the words from coming out in a hot agitated rush. “Do you know what he did to me? He had his men beat me in the Throne room where all the court could see. He had them strip my clothes half off and would have had them finish the job if his uncle hadn’t stopped it. He had his men strike me with their mailed fists when I spoke up to him.”

Margaery’s jaw was tight. “Sansa, you’re being hysterical.”

A voice in the back of her head whispered that perhaps Margaery was frightened and had good reason not to listen to what she was saying, but she bulled over that. It pleased her in some sick way to see Margaery unsettled: that at least meant she was hearing what Sansa had to say.

“Being queen doesn’t protect you from any of that!” Sansa said shrilly. “Just ask Cersei Lannister! Does she seem happy to you? Elia Martell was defiled and _killed_. Do you really think it will be any different for you?”

Margaery looked a little stunned at all of this, all these ugly stories pouring out when Sansa had only ever given her sweetness and reticence. _Your ladies_ , Sansa thought with a sort of hysterical grimness, _have taught me more than you know._ She had been gaining a re-education of sorts at the hands of Lady Merryweather and Lady Graceford, who had been only too eager to fill her in on the dark real-life counterparts to her beloved childhood romances. It had been much more interesting than the usual garden variety court gossip. _You see, Margaery, I have learned some things in your court of whispers after all._  

But then Margaery lifted her chin, and her face changed.

“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve suffered a man’s perversions in order to get what I want.” Margaery’s voice was even and cold, and Sansa felt all the breath go out of her chest like an extinguished candle flame. There it was, the truth or something like it. Just as she had wanted.

She waited for the older girl to go on, caught in a hot painful flush that struggled between regret and angry discomfiture. There was a new look on Margaery’s face now, something calculating and weary. She seemed half a stranger, in that moment. 

“Let me tell you something, Sansa,” Margaery said at last, shifting in her chair. Her tone was very plain and hard, and sounded strange coming from her sweet mouth. “Everybody in this world wants something. There are no exceptions.”

She fixed Sansa with an impossible look, her pretty face transformed into a hard mask. _See what you’ve made me say?_ she seemed to be accusing Sansa. _Now listen._

“And how, tell me, do you get whatever it is that _you_ want?” The older girl stared at Sansa as if daring her, just _daring_ her to answer. When Sansa said nothing, transfixed in her stunned flush of shame and comprehension, Margaery went on with a bright and bitter smile. “You give people what they want—or make them believe that you will. That’s all. It’s very simple.”

Sansa sat perfectly still, letting the words wash over her. _Make them believe that you will_.

Margaery frowned and it broke the bold lines of her resentment, her mouth curving with displeasure. Her pretty morning had been ruined, after all. “There, are you happy? Does that satisfy your curiosity, Sansa?”

Her eyes burned. Yes, it had. It had satisfied her curiosity, and then some. With a deep breath, Sansa stood abruptly. “I think I’ll return to my chambers for breakfast. And tonight.”

Margaery looked at her with incredulity. “Are you serious?” Sansa had stayed nearly every day and night out of the past week in Margaery’s bed, was what she meant.

She must, too, have been disbelieving at what Sansa had just done, the scene she had just caused, drawing Margaery out with her provocations, and now storming out with this dramatic statement. Sansa knew how it must look, how it must seem: and yet she was moving in a bright, crisp blaze of angry certainty, and could not stop. Nor could she bring herself to feel sorry about it.

“I’ve matters to attend to,” she said flatly, without offering an explanation.

Margaery stared at her for a long moment, with the faint, petulant surprise of someone who was not often denied what she wanted, before her face went hard once again. “Fine,” she said, an icy snap in her voice.

“Don’t expect me in court today, either,” Sansa added, her voice shaking. She’d forgotten she had the power to deny Margaery things, the power to say no. But nominally, at least, she still did. And exercising that power felt like the only thing she could possibly do just now.

Margaery gave her a cold look, but said nothing. Sitting very straight in her chair, she turned her head away as if in dismissal. But Sansa had not been waiting for her permission to go. 

She stumbled from her chair and left the room, feeling strangely light on her feet. Margaery behind her remained facing away from her on the balcony, her slim figure turned toward the gardens.

She thought Margaery might call out to her, but she did not. She paused for just a moment as she stepped into the cool recesses of the softly lit room, hating herself for doing so, but (even now) unable not to.

But Margaery did not turn to look at her even once. And so, sparing her lover just one last glance over her shoulder, Sansa turned away with dogged finality. She did not look back again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from the painting of the same name by John William Waterhouse ([x](http://roseroadkingsroad.tumblr.com/post/56938942225/labellefilleart-gather-ye-rosebuds-while-ye)).
> 
> Sansa's song was inspired by "Un Amore" by the Gipsy Kings ([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7vArAdpAXc)).
> 
> In other music news: natashass was kind enough to make this beautiful classic ficmix, **a religion in our love** ([x](http://8tracks.com/natashass/a-religion-in-our-love-1)). I also published what is essentially my writing mix for this story ([x](http://8tracks.com/heart-nouveau/not-so-strong-without-these-open-arms)).
> 
> _Edited 8/24/14._


	5. where everyone would love to drown

 

 

 

 _Weak, you’re weak and stupid just like they say_. 

It was four days of cooped-up agony in her chambers, pacing the room and staring out the window, before Sansa gave in.

Margaery had ruined everything for her. She didn’t live in her body the same way as before—the same body that had once been her fortress, her place to retreat from everything external, was changed. Just like that, the part of herself whose pain she had learned to ignore, whose bloody cycles she had learned to dread, had now become a charged vessel of possibility. Every inch of her body reminded her of the potential it had to feel—to feel good; every inch was now a place that had been touched, kissed, seen by someone else. Try as she might to reclaim her own thoughts, Sansa moved differently in her body now, and she viewed herself as another might see her. As, perhaps, Margaery saw her.

Her maids looked at her warily, and spoke to her softly. They tried cajoling her to eat, and rest, and go out into the gardens to take the air, but she could hardly hear them, and paid them no mind. She did not even go to the sept, for prayer could not exactly solve her dilemma, and she had no desire to try. She tried to read, but the words had no meaning; she tried desperately to think of something, anything else, to divert her mind. But it was as if she were out of practice at living in a world without Margaery, after existing so long in a world that had seemed to consist of nothing but. All of Sansa’s thoughts were of the girl who had burned her likeness into every aspect of Sansa’s life, even in her absence.

At night, she tossed and turned, but could not sleep until she put her hands between her legs and relieved the hot pulsing ache that tormented her and kept her awake. She gritted her teeth as Margaery’s image flashed before her eyes, every part of her, every soft limb and tender spot. She’d used to find doing this a little shameful, secretive: but at the same time it had been something private, utterly her own. Now it was nothing but an exercise in frustration—and just another reminder of what was growing truer every day.

She no longer belonged to herself.

On the morning of the fourth day Sansa surrendered, exhausted, to what she had been craving all this time. She bathed and dressed with exquisite care, disgusted with herself, her excitement. _Frivolous and stupid, that’s what you are_. But that couldn’t stop her from looking at herself in the mirror as if through Margaery’s eyes. _She’ll like me like this_ , she thought in a hot rush, applying rouge to just the edges of her cheekbones, _she’ll think I’m beautiful, and she’ll say—_

She winced to recall the steel in Margaery’s voice the last time they’d spoken, the harshness of the older girl’s words. Like anything one truly wishes to forget, the memory always caught her when she was most vulnerable, most relaxed, cutting through her composure like a knife. Reminding her. It was _that_ feeling, that twist of dreadful memory, which had kept her away for so long. The metallic taste in her mouth, the jerk of dread in her stomach when she remembered the older girl’s bare words— _you give people what they want, or make them think you will—_ were but symptoms of the greater fear that made her desperate. It wasn’t so much the scope of what Margaery had declared, for she had always known Margaery was clever. But it was the way she had felt when Margaery’s clear blue eyes stared at her, the older girl calmly speaking the truth, and Sansa hadn’t known if she counted as one of _those people_ or if she was something distinct, apart, in Margaery’s heart.

It kept her up at night. And it strengthened her resolve to try to fight her way out, to rise up out of whatever unspoken knot she and Margaery had gotten tangled into, in which Margaery could say things and Sansa was supposed to understand what they meant, was supposed to read between the lines and realize what was the truth, but simply could not.

But in the end, her need to see Margaery won out. It won out over everything else, just as Sansa had always feared—just as she had always known—it would.

 

 

 

With a swell of dark excitement, and an equal amount of awful, lacerating guilt, she went to the Maidenvault.

She hadn’t known what to expect, hadn’t thought things through, really; but when she descended the spiral stairs and approached the Maidenvault guards they took one look at her and waved her through the soaring doors. A Tyrell retainer came forth to say that the Lady Margaery was in audience and could receive Sansa right away. As if in a dream, she was ushered into the receiving hall to a small antechamber.

Silhouetted against the open pillared garden behind her, Margaery sat in conference with the Queen of Thorns. She bent her head close to her grandmother’s as if to absorb all that the old woman was saying, listening intently as her grandmother drew a withered finger across the large scrolls spread over the table before them. The two women were partly obscured by a settling veil of gold from the sun ascending the sky, but even seeing Margaery through that, the double vision of her nervousness and the hazy morning light, Sansa was hit with such a rush of excitement and release that something in her chest went loose and breathless. Four days’ worth of dread ebbed away like a forgotten dream, just like that.

The page at the doorway cleared his throat. “The Lady Sansa Stark,” he announced.

Margaery raised her head to look, and in the split second before a smile broke across her face like a radiant sunrise, Sansa’s heart nearly stopped. 

“Sansa!” she said. And there it was, her famous smile that could end wars and cure diseases, probably, the smile that made Sansa dizzy even after all this time. Margaery rose from her chair with barely-disguised haste disrupting her usual grace. “I’ve missed you,” she said ardently. Crossing the room in a few long quick strides, she squeezed Sansa’s hands tightly, pulled back to look at Sansa with eyes blue and bright, and Sansa couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe.

Lady Olenna cleared her throat and Sansa started, drawing back slightly, dropping Margaery’s brilliant gaze. She hardly dared to blink, her heart scarcely dared to beat in her chest. Every movement she made made it feel as if they would be discovered, found out. How could anyone possibly look at her and Margaery and not see what was there between them? How could the Queen of Thorns not?

“Now, I know that a pretty young woman like Lady Stark is much more toothsome than an old dried up thing like me. But Margaery, we haven’t finished here, have we.” 

It was not a question. The old woman granted Sansa a glance and a tart smile, and Sansa flushed.

Margaery turned back to her grandmother. “Oh, Grandmother, we were nearly done anyway,” she said, ever so lightly. She had not let go of Sansa’s hands, and now she gripped them tighter. “Couldn’t we finish our talk after court today?”

The Queen of Thorns looked at them in a way that made Sansa shrivel a little— _she knows, she must know_ —but at last tipped her head in a wordless nod.

Margaery smiled wider. “Come,” she said to Sansa, as if she could hardly wait. “I’ve a present for you.”

“Margaery,” came her grandmother’s sharp voice behind them.

Margaery’s smile flickered impatiently, and she turned. Olenna looked at her coolly for a moment, stern lines graven deeply in her wise old face. In her ornate headdress she looked like the world’s sternest septa, although Sansa had never seen a septa wear such a look of knowing. She turned her head at last, tapping a few curt fingers on the table, and said crisply, “Don’t be careless, Margaery.”

Sansa watched Margaery’s rosebud mouth tighten, and how, just as quickly, the tension disappeared and the gentle smile unfurled once more. Margaery nodded at her grandmother. “Of course, Grandmother.” But her voice was as tight as a bowstring, underneath its sweetness.

The Queen of Thorns granted her granddaughter only another brief nod for a reply, before settling back in her chair with regal, arctic restraint. “Good day, my dear,” she added, glancing at Sansa as a flinty afterthought.

Sansa dropped a curtsy, sick with dreadful exhilaration. But before she had any more time to think, to closely study the bend of Olenna’s head as it turned back dismissively back to the table, Margaery had roped an arm around her waist and pulled her from the room with a laugh shimmering with success. And Sansa found she wasn’t able to think about anything else, any more.

 

 

 

“Oh, it’s beautiful,” she breathed, turning to watch the lavender silk ripple around herself in the humid breeze. Behind her, Margaery beamed over her shoulder, watching their twinned reflections in the cloudy full-length mirror. “You’re too generous, Margaery.”

“A beauty like yours deserves a beautiful gown,” Margaery said, snaking a hand around the flat of Sansa’s stomach. “This is in the southron style, so you can see what you might wear when you come to Highgarden.”

Indeed, the gown was cut like so many of Margaery’s: short of sleeve, with a flowing, nearly sheer skirt and delicate gold-edged cutouts at the waist. Wearing it, Sansa felt positively risqué.

“You look—delectable,” Margaery whispered in her ear, wrapping her other arm around Sansa’s waist so that she held her tightly. “I should like to give you hundreds of gowns like this one, if they all suit you as well as this.”

In Margaery’s arms once more, it was stunningly easy to forget everything else. Margaery was doing an excellent job of pretending their fight had never happened; in response, Sansa’s dark doubts had begun to burn away like the morning mist that had yielded, only hours before, to the sunlight all around them. She let out a tiny breath, moving in aroused shock as Margaery’s fingers grazed the exposed skin at her sides.

The older girl pressed closer, her breath hot, and every inch of Sansa’s body flushed. Stirring, _wanting_ , she flicked a nervous glance to the seamstress in the corner of Margaery’s chambers. But their embrace might have been invisible for all the notice the old southron woman paid.

“Don’t worry about her,” Margaery said, noticing, a burr of laughter in her voice. “She’s paid handsomely for her discretion.”

Sansa blushed hard, trembling with anticipation and need. “Yes, but still, I’d feel much better if—”

“What, you don’t like to fuck with an audience?” Margaery mumbled into her neck. It sounded like she could be teasing—but for a moment, Sansa thought perhaps she had misheard. She stiffened with disbelief.

Apparently unaware of any change, Margaery lifted her mouth from Sansa’s neck to shoot a winning smile at the seamstress. As if frozen Sansa watched the older girl’s reflection, how it glinted in the mirror’s golden light. “Thank you, Dame Myna, that will be all. You may return tomorrow to complete the alterations.”

The old woman bowed in assent, gathering her things to leave with the dexterity of a seasoned royal servant. The door shut behind her with a definitive thud in what seemed less than a minute… and no sooner than they were alone, were Margaery’s hands everywhere that they had longed to go.

But Sansa was suddenly angry, violently angry, at what Margaery had said. She resisted, fighting to turn around within the tight circle of Margaery’s arms. “That was vile,” she said, breaking away, voice shaking. The older girl, standing there, stared at her in open confusion. “That—that _thing_ you just said.”

“What, I—” Margaery gave her a wide, startled look. Some of the light went dark in her face when she seemed to realize what Sansa meant, and she pushed the hair back from her face with a frustrated gesture. In her eyes, in her short movements, was a sort of coiled contriteness. “I’m sorry.” A pause. Then Margaery made a short rueful sound, a halfway laugh. “I was only teasing.”

“Teasing.”

“Sansa, I said I was sorry.” But the way Margaery said it didn’t quite take, her words slipping off a defensive veneer that was all too familiar. Sansa could hear in that tone that she wasn’t completely willing to own that she had said something wrong. Or maybe the older girl didn’t even think that she had.

And Sansa found herself shaking her head in automatic, angry disbelief, _this again?_ She drew herself up angrily, folding her arms tightly over her chest. “After everything you said, said before—”

Margaery looked her with what could only be described as wariness, as if she knew exactly what Sansa meant by _before_. Faced by the flat look on the older girl’s face, something halfway between acknowledgement and a question, Sansa found quite suddenly she didn’t want to relive everything Margaery had said before, nor any of the _other_ things they had said to one another.

She had been angry then, and she was angry now, but what good would it do to go over it all again? Especially now, when just being close to Margaery made her dizzy in so many ways she could hardly see straight?

She shook her head in a defiant blaze, some of her angry righteousness leaking away into uncertainty, and said nothing. With a slightly darkened expression, Margaery drew closer, hands held before her as if approaching a wild animal. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

Sansa let her come closer. After all, they could fight about it, or they could…

Then Margaery’s hands wrapped around Sansa’s waist, and Sansa groaned inwardly to feel just how much she’d missed this. It had, after all, been only a few days (where was her self-restraint? she had none, no longer had any at all). She turned her head and kissed Margaery, hotly, curling her fingers into the fabric of the older girl’s dress. “Show me you’re sorry,” she said into Margaery’s mouth, feeling like she was sinking, shipwrecked—how easy it had been to give in, just as she always did, with Margaery.

She felt so young, so tired, so inexperienced, suddenly. Margaery had probably _fucked_ lots of women before, and she, Sansa, had only ever been with Margaery, and couldn’t even control herself while doing that. She felt so utterly over her head. She was, after all, only one person the older girl had ever been with.

But just now, vision sealing off at the edges because all she could concentrate on was the feeling of Margaery in her arms, kissing her like that, Sansa found that she could pretend that she didn’t care. She dug her nails into the sides of Margaery’s arms, the soft tender skin there, and demanded in a sharpened whisper, “ _Show_ me you’re sorry.”

Margaery gave a short pant of hot air that sounded like a laugh, and pushed her down onto the nearest chair without wasting a moment. Sansa could feel herself trembling. Overwhelmed, for a moment she could hardly see; she could only feel and all she could feel was Margaery, the sweet weight of her, Margaery who was kissing her like she was starving; and she kissed back with the hunger and appetite she’d been denying for days. Margaery moved over her, as if surveying what was hers, then pressed a string of biting, stinging kisses down the side of Sansa’s neck before trailing her mouth into Sansa’s breasts, yanking at the fabric she had only just been admiring. And Sansa cried out, vision half-gone.

Margaery pulled away the lavender silk and sucked at Sansa’s breasts with hot gulps, the action hollowing out her cheeks to show her feral cheekbones. She bit down, not entirely lightly, and Sansa let out a gasp, a release of air that made her shake.

“Margaery—stop it—” She was panting, words rasping and filed away at the edges by the roughness of her need.

Margaery ground against Sansa, imperfectly but with just enough friction to make her hot, breathless. Sansa hitched her hips up, seeking pressure, and Margaery canted her own hips back so that they pushed together with critical, blinding heat. “Oh,” she pleaded, gasping, and Margaery leaned up, pinned Sansa’s hands above her head with a wolfish grin that dropped open into a hot sigh when Margaery turned her attentions farther south, apparently pleased by what she saw. Then the older girl withdrew and knelt, pushing Sansa’s legs askew, and bent her head. Clutching her skirts in her hands, it took everything Sansa had not to cry out and clench every limb tightly to her, trembling, anticipating the sensation of Margaery’s mouth on her again. She squeezed her eyes shut, centered only on the feeling.

With expert finesse, the older girl spread Sansa with two deft fingers and tasted her gently. At Sansa’s first moan, twisting her legs open, wider, for more, the older girl whispered hotly, “I know you like that, don’t you?” And that was it—that was all it took—Sansa melted, folding open to Margaery’s gripping touch like they had never stopped doing this together, had never spent a single night apart. Then Margaery built up to such hard pressure with her mouth and her wicked hands, one between Sansa’s legs and the other grasping at one of Sansa’s breasts, that Sansa’s cries grew unrestrained.

Twisting, gripping the sides of the chair and crying out, Sansa came once, clenching hard around Margaery’s fingers working inside her in just the way that always made her come undone. Seconds later she came again, shuddering to one more release before she went limp, and had to push Margaery’s head away. “Enough, enough,” she rasped, “stop it.”

Even then Margaery would not leave her alone, raising herself up onto her knees to place warm kisses on Sansa’s heaving stomach. Dazed, Sansa stroked the brown curls that fell over Margaery’s face. She gave a little gasp of surprise when the older girl pulled Sansa from the chair in a legless trembling heap, only to fold her down onto the bed beside them. Stretching her body out on top of Sansa’s, Margaery began kissing her way across Sansa’s throat, kissing Sansa’s breasts again, hands stroking everywhere, everything.

“My girl,” she murmured, from the swell of Sansa’s stomach, “my beautiful girl.”

She crawled up and kissed Sansa hard on the mouth when she was done, panting, and her mouth open hot and wet was the sweetest drug Sansa had ever tasted. Sansa brushed the hair back from Margaery’s face with open palms, holding Margaery there, looking at her.

“I’m sorry,” said the older girl in a half-whisper, gazing down at her. Margaery’s blue eyes were still dilated black with desire, but her expression was soft. “I’m sorry.”

For a second Sansa had no idea what Margaery meant; sex had driven everything else out of her mind. She closed her eyes for a moment, realizing.

“Help me out of this dress,” she said, at last. “If we haven’t ripped it already.”

She sat up slowly and Margaery gently helped her out of her unfinished dress. It would be getting repaired soon, thought Sansa, so what did it matter if they had ruined some of it anyhow?

“You too,” she insisted, and Margaery complied without batting an eye, unlacing the front of her gown and folding it over the bedpost. They settled down to lie on top of the bedcovers, Margaery on her side and Sansa on her back. As angry as Sansa had been, she now found it difficult to keep her eyes from fluttering closed in a sleepy haze, hardly caring that it was not even midday.

She was nearly asleep, thoughtless and glowing warm, when Margaery reached out to stroke Sansa’s hair away from her face.

“I’m sorry I was so harsh,” Margaery said quietly. “Before.”

Sansa blinked open her eyes and looked at the older girl, silently, slowly.

“It’s just—you surprised me. And really, Sansa. You know this is the way that things are. You are going to marry Willas.”

“Yes. Yes, I know.” Sansa closed her eyes.

“And when you do…” she heard Margaery press on beside her, her voice soft.

Sansa nodded, the lump rising in her throat even though she was trying not to cry, not to be childish. “And when I do…”

“You’ll go to Highgarden. Where it’s beautiful, and you will be so happy.”

Sansa nodded wordlessly, again. She opened her eyes and turned slightly to look at Margaery. It hurt to ask the next question. “When will I see you?”

Margaery gave her a wan smile, a ghost of her usual radiant ones. “When I come to visit you there. Whenever I can.”

She’d been so afraid the first time she’d told Margaery about Joffrey, at that noisy table with the Queen of Thorns, afraid that if the Tyrells did heed her advice that she would be punished. But Sansa was more afraid for Margaery now than she was for herself, and she would risk the Lannisters’ wrath to prevent Margaery from entering the marriage bed with Joffrey.

She had been so afraid, before. Now she felt only crushing sadness, and an awful feeling that she knew exactly how Margaery would reply.

“But when you’re married, Margaery… You know everything is going to be different.” It was the least she could say.

“Sansa, please,” Margaery said, and this time her voice was as flat and thin as a piece of thread. She looked tired as she met Sansa’s eyes, like she was genuinely asking. “Don’t talk to me about this any more.”

That seemed to be as much concession as she would give, all she would ever permit herself to say. Sansa bit her lip hard, weighing her thoughts as Margaery rolled away to stare up at the canopy of the bed, and wondered painfully whether she should try to speak more or give in to Margaery’s request.

After all that, she thought suddenly, wanting for so long to know exactly what Margaery was about, it was ridiculously comforting to come back into Margaery’s arms and find that she was just as hungry for Sansa as Sansa had been for her. _If that means leaving some things unspoken, so be it._ Sansa could let things rest, if only for now.

“I guess you missed me too,” she said with a little sigh, and Margaery turned back, laughed, reached up with one hand to cup her face, and kissed her.

And then, rolled close, forehead to forehead in a blush of warmth, Sansa felt strong enough to be kind. “Did you _really_ miss me?” she asked, trying to smile.

“Yes. I really, _really_ did miss you.” Margaery smiled back at her, lightly, as if it cost her nothing to speak the truth. But it was so much easier to see through Margaery’s armor when she, Sansa, had just contributed to building it up.

She closed her eyes, and tried to think of nothing.

Back in Margaery’s arms, she felt as if she were exactly where she belonged. All the hot denial and shame of the days before had melted away, leaving nothing but their shadows behind them. It was as if she were a candle, and Margaery the flame—Sansa felt like she was someone completely different away from Margaery, someone who underwent an elemental change to become the person she was in Margaery’s presence.

 _But candles burn to the very end_ , she thought, with cool dark clarity. At her side Sansa felt Margaery stirring, drawing one pressing hand across Sansa’s waist to pull her closer.

_And once they burn out, they can never be lit again._

Taena Merryweather’s hair was as black as a raven’s wing, and the pendant of her necklace disappeared into cleavage so deep that Sansa had to blink not to stare right into it when the Myrish noblewoman swooped down on her. Her dark blue dress was diaphanous, sultry, and Sansa caught a glimpse of tanned legs through a daringly high slit when the woman gathered her skirts to fold herself down onto the garden bench beside Sansa.

“Lady Sansa,” the Myrish lady greeted her, with a smile that Sansa had actually seen stop courtiers dead in their tracks.

“Lady Taena.” Sansa blinked away her surprise, and raised her head with a pretty smile of her own, patently opaque. 

“Lovely day, isn’t it?” The woman smiled wider, her dark eyes flashing. “Are you enjoying your book?”

Sansa looked at the book she held in her hands, mostly as an excuse for something to do as she waited for Margaery to return to court. “Er—no.” She fumbled for more words. “It’s very… ah, dull in the beginning.” She hadn’t even glanced at the pages. If Lady Taena asked her what it was about, she would have to make up something on the spot.

“Oh, I see.” Lady Merryweather was so lovely with her dark hair and rose-hued lips, looking at her was like looking at a picture. Although her presence was somewhat unexpected, given that she and Sansa only kept a passing acquaintance, Sansa could be polite.

She could always be polite.

So she inclined her head, keeping one eye on the court watching for Margaery. “And how—how does this day find you, my lady? Well, I take it?” Sansa’s mind was already slipping away from their mannered conversation.

“Yes, yes it does.” The Myrish lady extended her lovely neck, looking about them with lazy grace. “I hear that the King is arranging a hunt for later this week.” Lady Taena dipped her head, and now began playing with the chain of her necklace. “And I just played several rounds of cyvasse and was quite successful, you know. I won this.”

“Oh,” Sansa said moderately, glancing over in spite of herself, and immediately found herself trying again not to look right down the lady’s deep cleavage. “How lovely.” The swell of Taena’s chest above her tight gown looked soft, and inviting, actually. _No! Don’t think that._ Gods, one simple conversation after sleeping with Margaery again, and she was already a disaster.

But the Myrish lady saw her looking, of course. With a coy smile, she leaned closer, and drew the pendant out of her dress. Sansa felt her eyes popping a little, felt unable to look away. “Do you want to see?” asked Taena, her smile quite light.

Her hand folded over Sansa’s, closed around the damnable pendant, which was _not_ what Sansa’s eyes had been drawn to despite everything. “Isn’t it a lovely piece of jewelry?”

Well, that… wasn’t what Sansa had been expecting. “Ah—yes. Yes, it is.” She pointedly averted her eyes to the pendant, turning it over in her hands without seeing it at all.

Lady Taena made a little amused clicking sound with her tongue. “Oh, you don’t have to pretend with me, my dear,” she said, with forthrightness that made the breath stop in Sansa’s throat. “I know it wasn’t my necklace you were looking at.”

Sansa froze in place. “I—I don’t—”

“You’re not the only one who looks, you know,” Taena confided, her voice as soft and secret as a kiss. Sansa’s face burned immediately, and when she pulled back to look at the Myrish lady, Taena stared at her knowingly. “Many ladies do. It’s only natural, dear.”

“I’m—sure I don’t know what you mean.” Sansa’s voice sounded cool and prim to her own ears, but she was working hard to keep the ice in her voice.

“Oh, my dear,” said Taena with laughter in her words, “I think you do.” Sansa struggled for a moment on the knife’s edge between mortification, fascination, and the childish urge to give into tears. The Lady Taena studied her mercilessly then bent close, her voice an inviting whisper. “I’ve even made love to a few women.” 

“You—you have?” Sansa’s heart did a flip in spite of her efforts to keep her composure. So other women did what she and Margaery did together? Margaery had mentioned it, of course, but to hear it from someone else entirely— 

“Yes, darling, I have.” The Myrish beauty gave her a smile as dark as temptation. “Would you like to hear about it?”

There was simply no response, Sansa thought, absolutely shocked, to that question. She cast about for words, _any_ words, as Lady Taena settled back to look at her contemplatively. The woman looked as if she were thoroughly enjoying herself, as if she had all the time in the world.

“So you’ve never taken a lover?”

Sansa kept thinking that there was nothing more Taena could say that could possibly discomfit her _more_ , but she continued to be wrong. She choked a little, and Taena watched her closely, eyes flashing. “Haven’t you ever thought about it? Making love to a woman, that is? Just think… the soft skin, the breasts.”

Sansa thought, miserably, that she had never seen a woman stroke a stone bench so seductively. When she’d finished seducing the bench, the Myrish lady cocked her head at Sansa. “It’s like making love to some strange reflection of one’s self. All the same parts… yet different reactions. It’s very curious.”

 _I know very well what it’s like to make love to another woman_ , Sansa thought, indignant and horrified at the same time. Suddenly she only wanted the lady to go away. She had no idea what to say—no more than she would have before she’d come under Margaery’s tutelage and learned how to speak with a double-edged tongue in court (so she’d thought). She felt absolutely useless.

Lady Taena was still wearing her lazy, smoky smile, which twisted around her lush mouth like a loose garment. “You’re really very innocent, my dear, aren’t you?” She leaned in again, rosy lips parted with menacing delight. “There’s a lot, I think, that I could teach you.” Predatory as a hunting animal, Lady Taena drew forward, and gently stroked her fingers over Sansa’s forearm.

Sansa’s skin erupted in goose bumps, and something stopped up in her throat, as if she’d suddenly forgotten how to draw breath. _What—what—_

Across the court, just then, Sansa saw Margaery enter with a dignitary at her side, smiling and conversing in her usual vivacious way. And Sansa couldn’t help it: her eyes snapped to her lover like a moth to a flame, a movement born of habit that could not be deterred even in her sudden panic. Sansa watched Margaery turn her head automatically, making a study of the court with one quick sweep of her eyes.

And she knew the exact moment when Margaery saw the awful picture the two of them made together, Lady Taena’s hand folded over Sansa’s, leaning in like a predatory creature, Sansa’s own eyes as wide as some cornered animal’s.

The look on Margaery’s face said everything. _Gods, of course,_ this _is what the woman was trying to do!_ Suddenly Sansa couldn’t bear it, she couldn’t look any longer, and she leaned back hastily, her heart thudding in her chest.

But Lady Taena followed Sansa’s gaze with the rapid speed of a hunter, snapping her glorious dark head around, and saw Margaery watching them for just that split second. She saw it, Sansa knew—the look that flashed across Margaery’s face, bright as lighting and stormy as thunder, the unmistakable imprint of anger.

Sansa didn’t look long enough to see Margaery snap her gaze away, to immediately turn laughing and lightly to whomever she accompanied. She knew that Margaery would recover quickly, that awful look lasting only a second before Margaery quickly caught herself and turned away, smiling even brighter than before. But after what Lady Taena had seen, it didn’t matter how quickly the older girl recovered her smile.

Sansa’s heart pounded, and sank in her chest until she felt faint, sick at heart. She’d done it, ruined it, given it all away. She leaned back on the bench and, finding nothing else to do, closed her book with one miserable, definitive movement. 

The Lady Taena turned back to Sansa, and patted her hand. “So innocent, my dear,” she repeated, voice touched with the barest hint of pity now that she’d ripped the truth out of Sansa’s exposed underbelly. Her dark eyes seemed almost warm, now that they could afford to be. “You are so innocent.”

 

 

 

It had been nearly three months since Sansa had last been inside Cersei Lannister’s chambers, and while the queen’s rooms remained the same, Sansa felt like they might as well have been a different place entirely. She felt almost nothing like the girl who had been here the last time and it was downright strange, then, to see the bedding, lush tapestries, and the beautiful queen all exactly where they had been before. Only she, Sansa, had changed, here now at the queen’s table in a Northern gown that kept her sitting stiff and upright.

She ran her eyes around the room, cataloguing all the differences, or lack of them. There was hardly a thing amiss, scarcely anything that had changed in three months’ time. For here was the very same bed, those same carved chairs, and there, underfoot, the lush rug where she and Margaery had—

“I hear that you have remained close with the lady Margaery,” Cersei said, her face golden and hard. Sansa cringed inside. _Lady Taena._ She knew that she should never have divulged so much, but she had not guessed that Queen Cersei would be the recipient of Taena’s information.

She made a small noise of assent, running her finger around the base of her goblet. The queen, seated across from her, was dressed in a garnet-colored gown that made her look every inch the monarch. They had scarcely bothered to begin eating before the queen had launched into her line of attack, or questioning as it were.

“Has Lady Margaery continued to bother you with her… attentions?” Cersei said. Her beautiful face was marred by a little sneer as she said it. Looking at the Queen Regent now, Sansa saw suddenly why she had done it, why she had forced the two of them together all those months ago.

She saw now just as clearly that Cersei was trying to goad her, trying to pull from her the insinuation that Margaery was unnatural, somehow, and wrong. It put a bad taste in her mouth, for no matter how angry she was at Margaery, how deeply she hated the way Margaery would never speak plainly with her, she would never demean the older girl as a freak. Margaery at least had always been perfectly open about her preferences, and did not feel ashamed of them. Nor was Sansa ashamed for what she did with Margaery.

And then, looking at the violent expression on Cersei Lannister’s face, Sansa understood one thing more. The queen would never be able to comprehend that two women together could be a source of comfort and joy and solace, rather than merely multiplying the very femininity that Cersei seemed to consider the fatal flaw of womanhood. It burned on the edge of Sansa’s tongue to tell her, to ask her— _if you loathe being a woman so much, does that mean you loathe yourself?_

 _How_ , she thought in a shock of realization, _can you live that way?_

But there was only one safe route to take. Lifting her head, Sansa widened her eyes like a startled deer, playing the poor foolish girl she had been when Cersei Lannister had first known her. 

“Yes, I have been spending time with her,” she confided hesitantly, keeping her voice quiet.

“You have?” Cersei sat up in her chair, not bothering to hide the eager look that crossed her face. “And?”

“Well…” She bit her lip, as if she didn’t know what to say.

“Did she _do_ anything to you? Has she continued her advances?” The queen’s expression was dark with intent and she looked, already, triumphant.

“I—I—” Sansa looked at the queen, and then down at her own hands, biding her time.

The queen still frightened Sansa, but not so much as she once had. After learning Margaery, Sansa thought that Cersei Lannister was not so difficult to understand for all her terrifying power. The price one paid for being born female: that was the knowledge Cersei had tried to impart to Sansa when she was still promised to Joffrey. Looking at Cersei now, a woman so embittered from a life of struggle that she’d warned Sansa in no uncertain words what it would mean to walk a path similar to Cersei’s own, Sansa thought she understood that price even more greatly than before.

Bright and bold in her knowledge, she flushed and pretended to break down crying, shocked. “Oh, Your Grace, I didn’t know what to think,” she lied, almost whimpering. To her surprise, she really had begun to cry, tears leaking hotly from her eyes. “She was so forward, and I—I only wanted to be polite.”

Cersei seemed enormously, monstrously satisfied. “Yes, I know you are a dutiful girl, Sansa.”

But Sansa found that once she had started crying, it was not so easy to stop. “I only wanted to be kind to the future queen. I thought that if I refused, she might—”

“Oh, that’s enough, Sansa,” the queen snapped at her, irritation crackling in her voice. But Sansa could tell that Cersei was pleased, either with Sansa’s news or with her performance. _Probably both._

Sansa stopped crying, sniffling, and wiped her nose on her sleeve. She kept one eye on the queen, who appeared to be deep in thought.

“And that’s all she’s done with you? Have you shared her bed?”

Sansa nodded mutely, heart twisting at the warped reflection of truth. Cersei studied her expression coldly but then, apparently not deeming this worthy of her conversation, moved on.

“She hasn’t discussed anything else with you, anything of importance?” The queen leaned forward, and Sansa could tell from the look on her face that this, even compared to everything else Cersei had already asked, was a truly critical question.

“What would we discuss?” Sansa said stupidly, her heart pounding.

Cersei narrowed her eyes at Sansa, and Sansa’s chest squeezed in panic. The flaw in the logic, the unanswered question hung in the air between them, and she struggled to keep her eyes wide and her face blank. Of course the queen would see there was a hole in the reasoning: what else would she and Margaery discuss, indeed, when Sansa’s hand was being talked about all over court as the key to the North? Why would Margaery of the ever-grasping Tyrells be taking such a purely altruistic interest in her, when the matter of her hand was such a _valuable_ topic for discussion? Sansa had almost forgotten about her betrothal to Willas, if such a thing were possible to forget ( _Margaery_ , she made it so Sansa could forget almost anything), but she wondered with a start if she and Margaery would ever have truly gotten involved if Margaery had not initially been able to secure her hand for Highgarden. It was not a pleasant thought, and Sansa was almost lost in it before she remembered herself. She sat up straight, and focused on the equally unpleasant reality of the queen’s scornful eyes on her here, now.

But mercifully, Cersei turned her head away, and asked nothing more about it.

“Very well,” the queen said icily, and that was Sansa’s dismissal from their conversation.

Leaving, it made Sansa sick with unease to think of what Cersei would do with the information she had learned. But Sansa had done no more than confirm what the queen already had known, thanks to Taena Merryweather—nothing to be done about that, now—and she had not revealed the true nature of things of the relationship between her and Margaery.

All in all, she tried to convince herself, it had been a victory. Albeit a very small one.

 

 

 

“I hear you met with Cersei Lannister today,” Margaery said that night.

Sansa froze in her seat, where she sat unpinning her hair. Usually she would have a maid do this—but she and Margaery could not speak freely with maids about, and she would gladly perform her own small tasks if it meant they could have that freedom.

“Yes,” she said cautiously.

“Ours is an arranged marriage,” Margaery said dryly, from where she lay amid the pillows. She arched one perfect eyebrow. “Arranged by the jealous hands of Cersei Lannister.”

Sansa didn’t like to hear her say things like that. She was in no mood, no mood at all, for Margaery’s silly wordplay, especially not when it was laced with the bitter unreality of things that could never truly be. She let out a small irritated breath and turned back to the mirror.

Sensing Sansa’s reticence, perhaps, Margaery sat up from her place on the bed. “And how was your meeting?”

Sansa shook her head slowly, wordlessly. “She… she asked me questions. Insinuated… things. And she treated me, as usual, as if I hadn’t a brain in my head.” She glanced at herself in the mirror and saw, with some shock, the bitterness etched on her own face. _I look so_ _…_ _old. So tired, and so old._

Margaery slipped off the bed, coming close, and sank to her knees before Sansa. “Did she make you…”

Sansa drew back with brush in hand, slightly surprised at this sudden intimacy. “Make me _what_?”

The other girl dropped her eyes, a few pearl-like teeth worrying her bottom lip. She hesitated, reaching up to brush some strands of hair from Sansa’s face. When she had finished she stalled, hand falling against Sansa’s chest, as if unable to find the right words to speak.

Sansa was taken aback, realizing what the older girl didn’t want to say. “What… expose myself, like…”

Margaery released a breath, her blue eyes sad, and suddenly Sansa could tell that she was serious, that she had been genuinely worried.

“No… no, of course not. Of course she didn’t.” Sansa felt stunned, but fought not to show it. She could sense that doing so would only make the situation worse, when Margaery was being so strangely vulnerable.

Margaery let out a short sigh, again. “There’s no ‘of course’ about it,” she said in a low voice. She looked at Sansa with a face that was drawn and serious.

“Well, hello, Lady Jealousy,” Sansa teased, trying to make light of it. Her heart was turning, though, at the realization.

Margaery shook her head. “I don’t trust that woman,” she said softly. “I don’t trust her with you.” Rising to her feet she reached out for Sansa, and with a caving soft feeling Sansa came closer, drowning in all the impossibility of fondness. Margaery brushed her hand across Sansa’s cheek, cradling Sansa’s head to her chest.

There was a new maturity and heaviness in the way that Margaery looked at Sansa… as if—perhaps—she no longer took Sansa for granted. Sansa breathed slowly, listening to Margaery’s heartbeat, feeling the older girl’s fingers cupping her head, and thought with as much fierceness as she could just then, _how did I ever get so lucky, how did this happen to me, to have this, to have her?_  

“Did she say anything else?” Margaery asked, drawing back at last.

Sansa swallowed, looking up at the older girl. “She… she asked about you. And me.”

Margaery nodded shortly, staring out onto the balcony with critical eyes. “And?”

“I told her yes, that we… that we’re involved. I think… I think she knew that already. So I had to say it.” Sansa took a breath. “But… she thinks things are—different. Between us.”

“Of course she does,” Margaery said, with surprising gentleness. “She does not understand. And it is important, I think, that she does not.” 

 

 

 

Later in the night, tired of living so long in this trying world, and tired, perhaps, of the weight of this very trying day, they decided to play make-believe. Margaery brought out her jewelry chests, dozens of them, and it wasn’t long before the seemingly endless contents were spread across Margaery’s great bed. Sansa couldn’t stop bringing things out, exclaiming loudly over each beautiful piece, and Margaery sat against the headboard, watching her, laughing to see Sansa’s eyes go wide with delight at every new thing she saw.

“I suppose you Tyrells really are as rich as everyone says,” Sansa teased, after she had exhausted the treasure that every chest had to offer. She lay back amid piles of gold and jewels, citrine and emeralds and something Margaery called rose quartz and hundreds of other gems that Sansa couldn’t name, precious metals pressing into her body all over. And Margaery only smiled and rolled her eyes a little and said yes, if it made Sansa happy to think so, then yes they were.

Then she sat up and said that if Sansa liked her jewelry so much, Sansa had better try some on for good measure.

Roped in around the waist like a courtesan in some exotic, perfumed pleasure palace, as if she existed in some world worlds away from the one they knew, Sansa straddled Margaery wearing nothing but a girdle of jewels. “We could run away together,” she said dreamily. “To Lys, to some place.”

It was a very silly game, but then they were both so good at playing games. Margaery took the tip of Sansa’s breast in her mouth and sucked, lightly. “I’d pay a world’s weight in gold,” she said seriously, looking up at Sansa, “for a night with you.”

It was so silly to pretend to be some mistress of sensuality, when the only person who had ever made her feel this way was Margaery. But Margaery’s very touches made Sansa arch her back, moving with the heat kindled by the older girl’s mouth on her. Margaery’s hands settled on the saddle of her hips, pulling her in, and Sansa caught her breath with one shaky, expectant shiver. 

Then Margaery shifted, moving Sansa from her comfortable perch despite Sansa’s loud protestations, and reached over into the nearest jewelry box. When she leaned back she held something concealed in her palm. “For you,” she said, and Sansa peeled back her fingers like the unfurling petals of a flower. Inside, a tiny blossom worked in silver and gems winked at Sansa, catching the light. She put her hands to her mouth in surprise.

“A snowdrop flower,” Margaery explained. “Made of silver, and blue aquamarine.” She paused, looking carefully at Sansa’s face. “I had it made by a silversmith in Highgarden when I was very young, and thought you would like it. Do you?”

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, and smiled to see Margaery smile, the Tyrell girl’s blue eyes lighting up with soft pleasure. She turned and sat very still while Margaery put it on for her.

“It has none of my house colors,” Margaery said against her neck, “nor yours. So I think you can wear it without suspicion.”

Sansa clutched a hand to the tiny flower, bending her head in a smile. A thought struck her sudddenly and she turned around to face the older girl. “Do you remember,” she said, “when I had only just met you, really, and… you pretended to be a knight, for me?”

Margaery’s eyes went a little soft at the memory. Then her mouth curled up in a teasing smile. “Pretended? I don’t know what you mean by that, Sansa. Surely you must know I swore my knight’s vows along with my brothers? There was absolutely no pretending in what I said.”

Sansa smiled, rolling her eyes a little, and reached up to touch the silver flower once again. “So, you are giving me your favor?” 

Margaery leaned forward, putting both warm hands on Sansa’s thighs. “Oh, well, I think that technically it’s the _lady_ gives favors to her knight,” she mused, raising her eyebrows.

“Well, it’s stupid, then,” Sansa decided. “You’re my knight, _and_ my lady. And I’m yours, too,” she added.

“Then give me your favor,” demanded Margaery, with a little laugh. “Knight. Lady. Whoever you are, Sansa Stark, give me your favor.”

How could she say no to that? She leaned in and kissed Margaery, moving forward until she’d made the older girl lie back onto the bed filled with jewels, as lovely as a princess in her bower of roses, and they fell together as if they had been made to fit that way.

 

 

 

“Why did you say yes?” she asked, in their dreamy mutual haze as they curled together, jewels put away, games forgotten, both just on the edge of sleep. They lay facing one another, outstretched on their sides, and Sansa twisted one finger sleepily in the chain of her new gift.

“To Cersei Lannister, that time?” she continued, very quietly. It seemed wrong to say the queen’s name in this space, in their bed, but she wanted to ask this. After today’s events, they both knew exactly what she was referring to.

“You were such a beautiful lost thing,” Margaery said, sadly. She sounded very tired, and her voice was soft. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it, even before that night with the Queen.”

“Really?” That was surprising. Sansa smiled a little, but Margaery didn’t smile back in reply.

“I thought you would be delicious to try, but there was no way I was going to corrupt you. I’m not embarrassed of who I am, but I didn’t want to do anything against your will.” She ran her fingers around Sansa’s waist, pulling her closer.  

“You could have said no,” Sansa pointed out. “You could have walked out.”

Margaery didn’t say the same of her. For had Sansa really had that option, then? “I know.”

“But you didn’t.” _Why not?_

“I know,” Margaery repeated, her face a little closed-off. “And here we are.” This, with a sad little smile.

“Here we are,” Sansa echoed.

“I felt like a dirty old woman after you’d left me, that first time,” Margaery said quietly. She raised her head a little, indicating her room around them. “When we’d come back here, after. I thought perhaps I’d embarrassed you for good, and you would never want to see me again.” And the older girl frowned, little lines showing around her downturned mouth. “It was terrible to feel that I’d caused you any more pain than was already in your life.”

Sansa couldn’t find anything to say at that, not at first.

“You don’t cause me any pain,” she whispered at last, stretching out her fingers to intertwine with Margaery’s.

Oh, it was such a lie. But then again, she had lately come into the lying habit, hadn’t she?

And after what Margaery had just said, how could it hurt Sansa, really, to say such a pretty lie? 

 

 

 

Again she sat in the Tyrell gardens, charcoal in hand and paper before her; this time, though, she had a different subject in mind.

Bending to her task, Sansa drew her subject in long curving lines at first, and then shorter, smaller strokes that shaded and sculpted her image. Slowly a portrait coalesced, coming forward like a woman emerging from enveloping mist.

Someone stepped into her light. “You’ve improved,” Loras noted genteelly. She looked up sharply, just in time to see the pleasant expression unfolding on his handsome face.

She was glad to see him. They had not spoken since the disastrous dinner for three, and she had been afraid that he was cross or angry with her, or hated her, even. “Ser Loras,” she said warmly, giving him a genuine smile.

He smiled back, warmth crinkling the corners of his eyes. She imagined for a moment how she must look to him, sitting there in a dress just like Margaery’s, drawing the object of her affection. Yet still he smiled at her.

“May I see?” he said, and she nodded without saying anything more.

As Loras came around beside her, he bent to look at the likeness of his sister. Margaery, on the page, was rendered lovingly with her head turned in three-quarters profile, and a soft, sad expression on her face. He studied it for a long moment and then looked up at Sansa abruptly, the smile fading from his lips as if he had forgotten that he’d meant to be smiling.

“You care for her, don’t you?” he said, a queer note in his voice.

Sansa lifted the drawing from the table, feeling oddly possessive. “Yes,” she said, trying to read the strange look in his eyes. “I thought you knew.”

“What’s this?” The subject of their conversation was suddenly in front of them, her blue eyes sparkling. Instinctively, Sansa snatched the drawing up and held it to her chest, hiding the likeness even as her heart pounded in surprise.

“Nothing, dear sister,” Loras said, dimpling up at her. “Just having a little talk.”

Margaery turned her mirthful gaze to Sansa, who only nodded with the faintest of smiles.

“All right then, I’ll let you have your little secrets,” Margaery said airily, clearly in high spirits, and swept away again towards her waiting court.

They both watched her go. When she had gone, Loras gave Sansa such a sad look. “I didn’t realize,” he said softly. His usual veneer of smooth courtesy seemed a little rattled, cracked. He opened his mouth, and then tried again, with difficulty, to speak.

“I wouldn’t care so much for her, were I in your place,” he said finally, in a low voice. And the warm sun felt cold to her suddenly.

She wanted to scream at Loras, to ball up the portrait and throw it at him. _Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think that I’ve tried to stop, tried and tried, but couldn’t?_

Loras escorted her to the edge of court, where Margaery was waiting to take her up to dinner. Casting an eye to make sure that no one was about, Margaery greeted her with a brief, warm kiss, and they went swiftly up the path until they reached one of the open outer chambers of the Tyrell apartments.

From the shadows of the room emerged a familiar, stately figure whose appearance made them both stop right where they stood. Olenna Tyrell smiled at the two of them. “Margaery?” she said, her voice like a clarion bell. “Come and speak with your grandmother for a moment, won’t you? That’s a good girl. Come along now.”

Margaery gave Sansa a little smile and a nod, before following her grandmother into the next room. The heavy wooden door shut with a thud, leaving the great room in silence.

Sansa smiled timidly at the teenaged Tyrell page hovering by the door. He blushed and averted his eyes, before folding his hands behind his back and staring earnestly at the wall. Bored, Sansa looked about for something to do, but there was nothing; and so she trailed into the garden to look dispassionately at the neatly manicured rose beds. She was bending to touch a blossoming white flower, wondering if its scent were as lovely as its appearance, when the sound of voices caught her attention. Looking up, she realized that she was directly beneath the window of the room where Margaery and her grandmother had gone.

Sansa could hear their conversation, and she froze where she was, listening.

“You really have always been so careless about these things.” Olenna’s voice was deliberate, as though explaining something to a child. “And yes, it’s made it quite easy to separate your lovers from your husbands, but for heaven’s sake, Margaery. You need to remember that the girl is still an asset, and you can’t be getting so attached to her.”

Margaery said something inaudible. Through the small, arched dormer window, Sansa could hear only the sound of her voice, but not the words. Her heart sank like a stone, in a way that was equal parts thrill and dread.

“Yes, yes, that’s what you always say,” Olenna said impatiently. “But don’t treat me like an idiot just because I’m old and grey, girl. These types of relations may not result in heirs, but that certainly doesn’t mean they’re without consequence.”

Margaery said something in a fast low voice, and then the Queen of Thorns' voice broke in sharply, as if interrupting. 

“ _No_ , and it’s childish to insist otherwise, when anyone with eyes can see how you dote on that girl. You and I both know what that means. It’s _dangerous,_ Margaery.”

Another pause. Then came Olenna’s voice once again.

“It’s not just about you, you know. You’ll end up hurting her too if you continue in this way, and she’s only a girl—a very young _girl_. These things still matter to her, I’m sure, and in case you have forgotten, she’s already lost her father. I’m sure you understand me, Margaery.”

This time, Sansa heard Margaery speak. But all she said was, “Yes, Grandmother.”

“Very well, then.” The Queen of Thorns’ voice was brisk.

Sansa shrank away, and quickly rose to her feet and ran back up the low steps into the great receiving room. The Tyrell page looked at her with alarmed blue eyes, and she turned and pressed a hand to her chest, gathering herself.

The door opened, and Olenna and Margaery came out, side by side. Sansa whirled to look, heart pounding, and dipped a hasty curtsey to them both. While Olenna’s face was the picture of serenity, Margaery’s was pale.

“Good evening, Sansa,” the Queen of Thorns said crisply, and went out. The page dropped such a low bow as she passed that it seemed he might fall over and tumble to the ground.

Sansa turned to the older girl. “How was your conversation?” she said airily, but her voice was shaking for all that.

“Shh, shh,” Margaery said, almost inaudibly. She took Sansa’s face close in her hands, sweeping her palms backwards over Sansa’s cheeks. Then she pulled Sansa close and kissed her, softly at first and then harder, like she owned her.

Sansa, tensing in alarm, wanted for a moment to point to the Tyrell page who stood right there in the room with them, less than twenty feet away. But Margaery seemed to be in another world entirely, and Sansa had no choice but to relax in her feverish grip, responsive in spite of her worry—and to be perfectly fair, such public actions were beginning to bother her less and less. At the rate they were going, soon everyone in the Red Keep would know about the two of them, one way or another. She let out her interrupted breath, and closed her eyes tightly. Margaery’s hands were warm. Sansa tried not to think about anything else. 

“Shh,” repeated Margaery, pulling back to look at Sansa with blue eyes that were wide and half-dazed. She stared at Sansa intently, as if she might find the answer to some critical question written there on Sansa’s face. She pressed the pad of her thumb over Sansa’s lips, and her hand was trembling.

Sansa found, suddenly, that she was afraid. Margaery tried to smile, but it didn’t quite come out right; and she shook her head, as if to rid herself of some dogged ghost.

“Sansa,” she said, very softly. “Let’s please not talk about that any more.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from the song 'Sara' by Fleetwood Mac ([x](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roKxJRwc4jc)).


	6. look at this tangle of thorns

 

 

Beneath her feet the ground had frozen so cold it almost burned, but Sansa moved with unrelenting speed that sent the chill wind ripping through her hair. She was running so fast that she couldn't see the blurred faces of those surrounding her; she didn’t know if they were human or animal. But they were hers, and she was theirs. Somehow she knew this without uncertainty or doubt.

An inner howl built up inside of her, one that swelled with both panic and joy, but she couldn’t open her mouth to release it. Her teeth were sharp and they cut her lips for all the things she could not say. And then all at once the others around her fell away, receding into the trees, and her feeling of uncommon joy subsided. She was alone and it struck fear into her heart. Everything was hazy, snowy, and cold, and though Sansa strained to see she could not. In the grey surrounding her she could just make out—

There was a sudden jolt, a jerk of disequilibrium—and suddenly Sansa was awake and sweating in her own bed, bedclothes fisted in one hand. She was not bitterly cold; beneath the blankets she was in fact uncomfortably warm, and her heart was pounding wildly. With a shallow, irregular breath she pulled herself up against the headboard. Her mouth hurt, and she lifted a hand to see blood there: had she really bitten through her lip? And there was a noise that Sansa struggled to identify, one that grew louder as the unfocused dread left over from her dream pooled darkly in her stomach. Then she realized what it was. It was footsteps.

The canopy was yanked back abruptly and Sansa squeezed her eyes shut instinctively against the intrusion.

But her sudden dread ebbed away to see it was only her maid Shae, standing silhouetted there in the crisp morning light. “Wake up, Lady Sansa,” Shae said in a low voice, and leaned over to turn back the bedcovers. Her hair fell in a dark aureole about her face, keeping Sansa from meeting her eyes. “You have a visitor.”

“A visitor?” Sansa drew her naked knees up to her chest, tugging her nightshift down over them with anxious fingers. She felt disoriented and dull, still mired in the gray landscape of her dreams. “Who is it?”

For a moment it looked as if Shae did not want to say, black eyes snapping in her thin pointed face. Finally she straightened and put both hands on her hips, her look halfway between apology and remorse. “It’s the Queen Regent, my lady.”

“The Queen  _Regent_?” Sansa repeated in surprise.

Shae turned her head, moving to the chair to fetch Sansa’s dressing robe. “Yes, she’s come to see you. And you must hurry, for she wants you up and dressed.”

“But I—” Sansa rubbed sleep from her eyes to focus on Shae’s face. The morning light was bright, but the day somehow already felt dark. “Shae, why is she here?”

Shae’s entire body looked like a warning, her narrow shoulders stiff and mouth compressed into a tight line. She shook her head briefly. “I don’t know, Lady Sansa. But you must not keep the Queen waiting.”

She reached for Sansa, and with a head that felt sluggish and slow Sansa stood and was hastily tied into her robe. She went slowly out of the bedchamber, glancing hopefully back over her shoulder at Shae, but then wished that she had not. The clouded look on Shae’s face only made her feel worse.

And when she turned her eyes forward, base fear clawed at her to see Joffrey’s mother standing in the middle of the solar, looking as beautiful as anything the gods had ever created.

“I’ve a present for you, Sansa,” Cersei Lannister announced. The queen was lovelier than ever in a high-necked gown dressed in garnets, golden hair arranged in ropes on her head—but the contrast of the hard-faced Kingsguard members at her sides made her unearthly beauty seem almost sinister. Sansa took one look and drew her robe more tightly closed, as if that could serve as any sort of protection from what was to come.

“Thank you, your Grace,” she heard herself say, voice surprisingly steady.

The queen extended one arm in its trailing silk sleeve. From the corner of the room came the queen’s handmaiden bearing something shimmering and silver, and at Cersei’s signal the woman let it tumble gently to the floor. Despite her fear Sansa caught her breath admiringly: it was a gown of silvery satin, vair, and lace that unfurled like liquid made cloth, and its material beauty was unparalleled.

“Do you like my gift?” asked the queen, turning to Sansa. “Go on. Take a look.”  

Obediently Sansa stepped forward, delicately running her fingers over the silken contours of the gown. It felt wrong to appreciate the sensual beauty of the dress when she had to fight not to tremble, but so it was. She paused after a few moments, looking cautiously to the queen. “It’s such a generous gift, your Grace, but… Why should I merit such an honor?”

“Please,” Cersei said, but her smile didn’t reach her eyes. She veiled her hands in the sleeves of her gown and compressed her lips, waiting. “I’m certain it will look even more beautiful on you.”

Before Sansa could speak, even to say a mere yes or no, Cersei’s woman put one hand on the small of Sansa’s back and whisked her behind the dressing screen. “Do show us,” the queen’s voice said behind them, her words as crisp as brittle bones. On the opposite side of the screen Sansa’s maids descended as if they’d been lying in wait there like the obedient denizens of a dovecote, reaching for Sansa with sharp fingers and heads downturned like silent birds.

Naked and bewildered, Sansa stood unmoving and outwardly docile as the women cleaned her body with scented sponges. She let them dress her in silk smallclothes, delicate doeskin slippers, and finally her new gown, not saying a word even when the laces were pulled tight enough to make her gasp for breath.  _This could be anything_ , Sansa tried to tell herself as her heart pounded wildly and her mind raced,  _merely an innocent gift_. But hadn’t she learned many times over that no gift from the queen was ever innocent?

“Do you—” she said in a low urgent voice, trying to meet the eyes of any of the women who moved around her, “do you know what this—” But the serving women had eyes and ears only for their task: none seemed to hear her but Shae, who paused to put a comforting hand on Sansa’s cheek for just a moment before continuing to work. And Sansa was forced to resign herself to wait.

When Sansa finally emerged from behind the screen, moving in the small, restricted steps that the gown permitted, the Queen Regent looked up quickly. Her eyes flashed for a moment with something Sansa did not want to recognize, before her full mouth curved into a cold smile. “You are beautiful,” she said, taking Sansa’s arm and leading her to stand before the mirror.

Something stopped in Sansa’s throat at her reflection. She was a vision, the waist of her gown nipping in where snowy white satin met crushed vair and dove-grey lace, long dagged sleeves nearly trailing the ground. It was a gown that befitted a true queen of winter—and long ago that would have delighted Sansa. But now all she felt was icy disconnect as she stared at her own image, as if the girl in the mirror were someone she did not know.

Something warm brushed against Sansa’s throat, and she snapped back to attention with a little shock. The queen was running a surveying hand over Sansa’s exposed neck, stopping to place two fingers under Sansa’s chin. Sansa swallowed, stoically meeting the queen’s eyes, but Cersei did not look back; instead her gaze wandered almost languidly over Sansa’s body in a way that was both rueful and appreciative. “It suits you,” she said, voice tinged with some unreadable emotion. Sansa suppressed a shudder as the queen’s hand dropped again to the hollow of her throat, lifting the thin chain and the pendant that hung there. Sansa glanced in the mirror, and her heart almost stopped when she realized what the queen was studying.

It was Margaery’s snowdrop flower, the necklace of silver and aquamarine she’d given Sansa the day they’d played at make-believe in her bed. Sansa had not taken it off since. “Very pretty,” the queen observed without emotion.

Sansa swallowed, suddenly gone very cold. “Thank you, your Grace.”

“But I don’t think it suits your new gown,” the queen went on, raising both hands to delicately unfasten the clasp. She extended her hand with the necklace dangling from it, and from the corner of her eye Sansa saw Shae step forward to take it.

“Much better.” The queen stepped back, gesturing to the dressing table. “Sit down, Sansa.” Sansa hesitated, glancing towards Shae.

“ _Now_ , Sansa,” said Cersei, voice silky with impatience, and Sansa flushed and obeyed. The bodice of her dress was laced so tightly that it was difficult to sit properly, her breasts pushed up like ripe fruit. In the dressing table mirror she could see the Kingsguard standing at not-so-blank attention, many cruelly surveying her with unhidden interest. A spasm of fear clenched her stomach and Sansa looked away.

 “Your Grace is too kind,” she ventured, folding shaking hands in her lap. “But I—I don’t understand why…”

“Here,” said the queen as if she did not hear, or see Sansa shaking, and offered Sansa some different scents to choose from. Giving up for now, Sansa sank into the seat and selected something lemony. The queen bent to dab cosmetics onto Sansa’s face as the maids worked her hair into an elaborate style to rival the queen’s own; unable to move, Sansa studied Cersei’s face as the older woman worked. The queen was so beautiful, grace writ into every sculpted golden angle of her face, but there was something cruel and defeated in her beauty, too. Sansa could have studied the queen’s face for days, setting her learned fear aside, but that didn’t ease the apprehension that leapt in her with every stroke of Cersei’s long fingers.

At last the queen rose to her feet, motioning for Sansa to come stand before the mirror. Cersei lingered a step behind, her head hovering just over Sansa’s shoulder like some foreboding angel’s. In their reflection, the queen’s expression was as inscrutable as Sansa’s was dully blank. “Beautiful,” said Cersei evenly, as one might comment on something displayed on a wall: a portrait, or mounted animal’s head. “You look like a woman now.”

There was something terrible in the way she said it, calling up shadowy memories of all the times she’d spoken thus to Sansa before. Suddenly a wave of dark suspicion hit Sansa, and she drew a breath that was murky and thick with disbelief. She turned slowly to the queen, unwilling to believe, stupid with denial.  _No_ _—_ _it can’t be_ _…_

But the queen had already turned from the mirror, summoning her woman forward with a wave. “I’ve only one more gift for you today, Sansa.” The lady-in-waiting stepped forward with one last garment in her arms, one that tumbled to the floor as she moved to affix it about Sansa’s shoulders—

And the instant Sansa saw the Stark direwolf scratched out in seed pearls, emblazoned like a battlefield beacon across the snowy white back of her  _maiden’s cloak_ , she knew.

All the air left her lungs and she gasped for breath as if she’d been physically backhanded. White flashed before her eyes. Sansa stumbled backwards but she was so clumsy in her confining dress, like some lame animal that had been caged for so long it no longer knew how to run free.

“ _No!_ ” she screamed in panic, bolting for the chamber door, but Meryn Trant caught her before she had gone even a few steps. She struggled violently in his grasp, bending forward over his sturdy arm and tripping on the hem of her gown. “Please, no!”

The queen looked on with a hard, dispassionate face. “You must do your duty, Sansa.”

 _Gods, no, please..._  Sansa still didn’t fully understand what was happening, but as things coalesced with icy clarity a sense of slow awfulness descended on her. Her blood seemed to chill in her veins, tears springing to her eyes. “No,” she repeated desperately, twisting in the Kingsguard’s arms. “Please, my queen, I don’t—”

Cersei moved forward, taking Sansa’s face in her hands in a way that was cruelly maternal. Sansa flinched from Cersei’s grasp, but the answering flicker of displeasure on the queen’s face made the Kingsguard twist Sansa’s arms even more tightly behind her back. Sansa whimpered in pain, taking a deep breath and surrendering to the queen’s hands. “You look beautiful, my little wolf,” Cersei said coolly and somewhat tragically, smoothing her thumbs over Sansa’s tearstained cheeks. Her golden brow was smooth, unworried. “Far too beautiful. It’s more than that monster deserves.”

 _Monster?_ —Sansa thought in fevered confusion, but even that terrifying word was overshadowed by what Cersei had said first.  _You look beautiful._ The words caught in Sansa’s mind, echoing the person who had last said them to her: Margaery _._  The unbidden thought,  _profane_  almost in this nightmarish context, twisted in her chest until she wanted to scream in agony.

And suddenly Sansa saw things quite clearly, as they were and as they’d always been—how Cersei must see them. For hadn’t Cersei Lannister accidentally given Sansa this, given her and Margaery to each other? Sansa knew instinctively that this was Cersei’s revenge, and yet it was much more than that, too. Cersei would not have had the power to orchestrate this all on her own; she was merely taking her victory where she could find it, and that was at Sansa’s expense. Of all the Lannisters Cersei was the most desirous to exercise her power: Sansa’s life was merely one of the few chips with which she had to gamble. And thus the order of this awful world was reaffirmed, with Sansa at the very bottom.

Helpless tears sprang again to Sansa’s eyes, and the queen narrowed her own. “Now don’t cry,” she said with sweetness that hardly masked her disgust. She delicately dabbed at Sansa’s tears with her sleeve… and Sansa had the sudden perverse inclination that Cersei would lick them away, savoring the taste, if she could. That Cersei loved seeing her suffer, and cry, and learn. “Tears may be a woman’s weapon, but you’d be a fool to waste yours on me. Nothing was ever changed for me, no matter how many tears I shed.”

 _But you’ve taken everything from me_. Sansa sagged in the grasp of Meryn Trant, suddenly feeling no older than when she’d first met the queen as a silly girl full of romantic ideas. What had truly changed, since then? She’d still clung to a dream—still stupidly believed that her life would have a happy ending. She had hoped against hope that because she’d found happiness with Margaery, perhaps everything else might also be happily resolved. But it turned out the world had not finished stripping her of her dreams, one by precious one.

“You must be strong, Sansa,” the queen said philosophically. “You can struggle and cry and make a scene, or you can go with your head held high and be strong. A woman’s strength is all she has.” She looked intensely at Sansa, and Sansa fought her tears and stared back. Cersei looked almost curious, one eyebrow quirking up with weary rancor. “You do understand me, don’t you?”

Sansa nodded. She suddenly felt very tired—and she  _did_  understand the queen, in some terrible way.  _What else can I do?_ “Yes, your Grace,” she whispered.

The queen nodded at the Kingsguard, satisfied, and straightened up to her full height. “Very well, she’s ready. Let’s go.”

Limp as a marionette, Sansa was marched from her rooms in the arms of Osney Kettleblack.

 

 

 

Much to her surprise it was Tyrion Lannister who stood waiting outside the castle sept. Shock clawed through Sansa’s disorientation to see him. Back in her chambers she'd been unable to think further than the maiden’s cloak on her back—she hadn’t spared a thought for the identity of her unwanted groom. But the way Tyrion looked at her now, his expression a guarded amalgam of apology and courtesy, made Sansa struggle for her composure. It hurt almost physically that beneath the little man’s resolute expression flickered a fragment of what looked like genuine hope.

 _He was kind to me once_ , she thought with strange, calm detachment; panic burbled up in her chest, but she swallowed it back down. Yes, Tyrion Lannister had stepped in when Joffrey ordered her stripped and beaten before the Iron Throne. No one else had spoken for Sansa then.  _It seems so long ago, like that was some other Sansa and some other Imp._  But it was true—Tyrion Lannister had been kind, and that made Sansa less afraid.  _And he is not Joffrey who, despite what the queen says, is the true monster in Lannister colors._

“My lady,” said the dwarf, inclining his oversized head to her, and Sansa took a deep breath and willed herself to be charitable.

“My lord.” She gazed down at him, intending to say more, but suddenly turned her head away. Sideways she saw him hesitate, standing the height of a mere child at her feet. But her eyes had again begun to fill with tears and Sansa couldn’t look at him again, she simply  _could not_.

She heard Tyrion draw a deep breath, and he spoke so carefully that he seemed to be measuring out his words. His voice was smooth and surprisingly pleasant: a kind voice, which only made it worse. “I am sorry, Lady Sansa. I had no way to inform you of this marriage beforehand. And my lord father, for reasons of his own, felt that secrecy was necessary. But—”

Sansa inclined her aching head and looked down at him, saw how his mismatched eyes were wide with emotion, making the mangled red gash that remained of his nose even uglier. He was trying so hard to make this less painful for her. She couldn’t hold back a shudder.

He flushed, continuing with dignity that was admirable. “You could be wed to my cousin Lancel if you wished. That might be preferable. He is also a Lannister but closer to your own age, a sight easier on the eyes than I am, and—”

“No,” Sansa interrupted.  _If I am to marry a Lannister, better the devil I know_. How like a game this all was, exchanging one pawn for another: they were all just pawns, fooling themselves into believing that they were players. Cersei and Tyrion Lannister were hardly better than Sansa herself, for it was clear that neither of them had any true hand in arranging this sham of a marriage. “No,” she said again in a flat tone. “I am a ward of the crown, and my duty is to marry as the king commands.”

“As you will,” said Tyrion, something almost like relief coloring his voice. Sansa looked away, stomach turning.

He seemed to expect her to speak again, but all she could do was close her eyes. Time stretched and snapped in hellish, elastic moments, and presently—mercifully—the Imp’s figure receded and went away, leaving Sansa to wait there alone. She could make a run for it, she realized, in between shallow, agitated breaths, but she was utterly aware of Osney Kettleblack’s presence at her back.

And even if she did run, where did she possibly have to go?

Like a vision from some nightmare Joffrey Baratheon appeared at last, all golden hair and gleaming teeth in a monstrous smile. Sansa felt her head begin to spin, mouth tasting of acid and blood. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, shrinking from him as he stepped closer.

The king smirked, adjusting the gilded lion’s-head clasp at his neck; he was attired as richly as his mother, a velvet cape slung across his chest and sword riding at his hip, and looked as handsome and merciless as a god. “I’m your father,” he told her magnanimously.

Sansa bristled, lips curling around her teeth. “You’re  _not_.”

“Today I am.” Joff smiled at her with nasty delight, smoothing down the crushed velvet sleeves of his doublet. “Your father is a dead traitor and  _someone_  must stand in for you. It’s quite a privilege to have the king give you away at your own wedding, you know. You ought to feel honored.”

She longed to spit in his face. “I’d sooner die.”

Joffrey  _tsked_. “Watch your tongue, you Stark bitch. That can easily be arranged.” He paused unpleasantly. “Although I suppose you shan’t be a Stark bitch for much longer, shall you? No, after today you’ll be a  _Lannister_  bitch, in a Lannister kennel.” The way he looked at her, smiled at her, made Sansa’s blood run cold. “And just because you’ll be married to my uncle doesn’t mean I can’t make you do exactly as I please.”

A nightmarish sense of queasiness overtook her. Sansa bit the inside of her lip so hard it almost bled to keep herself from vomiting, and she had no answer. Looking as if he knew he’d won, the young king smugly offered Sansa his arm and then grabbed her hard by the wrist when she refused him.

It was time for the wedding ceremony to begin. Together they entered the castle sept, the great doors swinging wide to let them pass.

It was like a waking dream. Joffrey’s grip on her arm hurt terribly, but the pain was almost sweet in that it was all that anchored Sansa to the ground. Each step down the aisle increased her detachment, peeling her out of her own body until it seemed she were merely observing the scene from some place amid the gilded sconces that hung low over the crowd, and it was some other poor girl being led through the sept like a sacrifice to the cruelest of gods. The bowels of the sept churned with half-familiar faces that blurred together, a silent painted pack of witnesses to this crime of a wedding. In the air was the mingled scent of perfume and overripe bodies, as well as the sickly sweet smell of incense, the acrid stench of centuries of religious decay.

Back on the ground, Sansa raised her head in the hazy ambient light of the thousands of candles that lined the sept in enormous candelabras, smoking and raising the temperature. She walked slowly, only vaguely aware that she had to keep moving. That was until she remembered with a spurt of unfamiliar hope to look at the people in the crowd, to see if perhaps, just maybe…

But no Tyrells were present at this wedding. This Sansa saw with harsh and disorienting disappointment, scanning the crowd with her heart in her mouth—there were the members of the Kingsguard in their white cloaks, cloaks nearly as white as her own, but no Ser Loras. Lady Olenna did not stand in the first rows of the highest-ranking attendees, and neither did—

 _No_ , she realized with a sick sinking feeling, here were only Lannisters and their kind, Lannister retainers and allies and court hangers-on like that accursed Taena Merryweather. There was no one she knew or loved. With this realization Sansa at last gave in, no longer fighting back the tears marring her vision. She let them fall, streaking her face with wet heat.

No one seemed to notice that the bride was crying silently throughout the ceremony, or if they did, no one cared.  _How can this be real? It’s too awful._  Joffrey, her father’s murderer—posing as her  _father._  Her wedding, which she had always imagined as a joyful occasion straight from a storybook, glowing in a haze of true love and attended by her family—being realized as this surreal nightmare. And perhaps most poignantly—she, Sansa, wrapped in a maiden’s cloak, when she knew down to her very bones that she was no maiden.  _Not after Margaery. Not any more._

But none of that, Sansa recognized as the tears came faster, nothing that had passed between her and Margaery, all the kisses and promises and lovemaking, had stopped her from being bundled off into marriage to a man she hardly knew, from the family she most despised. No. It hadn’t changed a thing.

 _But how could you truly think that it would?_  said a voice in her ear, horrible in its logic.  _Margaery has never even told you that she loved you, and you thought it would somehow be enough? Her promises never meant anything—see how she has failed them now. Playing at love in another girl’s bed is hardly the same as saying the sacred vows of marriage; it was never enough to shield you from something like this. Now look what has happened._

Sansa sobbed, dizzy with pain, but the prayers and vows and singing were never-ending. Swaying slightly she focused on the lights of the candles instead, breathing as deeply as her tight dress would permit; and she was a world away, staring at the unchanging looks on the faces of the statues of the Mother and Father that stood resolutely on either sides of the marriage altar, when there was a tug on her dress that made her suppress the urge to gasp.

She glanced down to see her husband gazing at her, his face a world of stifled recrimination, shame, and pride.

She could not even fathom the weariness that overcame her to look at him. She saw his pain and recognized it, but she could not bear it.  _I can’t take on your pain as well as my own_ , she thought, and her heart hardened with resentment. She turned her head away and would not kneel for him to change her maiden’s cloak.

But then, as the onlookers’ laughter mounted throughout the sept, Sansa relented with a hot flush of shame.  _Why should I punish him?_  He surely had no more will to be there than she did; this marriage was not his fault. How selfish she was to think this way. She turned to the Imp, kneeling, and apologized to him with her eyes.

“With this kiss I pledge my love, and take you for my lord and husband,” she repeated after the High Septon, suddenly resigned to it. The sooner this ceremony was over the better, perhaps, but—what was to come next? She remained on her knees, suspended in dull acceptance of the moment, and looked to her new husband as she waited for his kiss.

“With this kiss I pledge my love, and take you for my lady and wife,” Tyrion echoed hoarsely. He leaned forward, and Sansa grimaced as she accepted his dry brush of his lips to hers. She straightened to her full height, crimson bridal cloak lying heavy across her shoulders.

The Septon raised his crystal into the air to say the final words, rainbow light thrown down onto the marble floor of the altar. “Here in sight of gods and men, I do solemnly proclaim Tyrion of House Lannister and Sansa of House Stark to be man and wife, one flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever, and cursed be the one who comes between them.”

At the foot of the altar, Cersei Lannister turned suddenly to gaze up at the new man and wife, and Sansa felt a horrible shock as if she had been burned. The Queen Regent had a terrible dark look on her face, and when her green eyes locked with Sansa’s they ripped through Sansa like claws. And yet suddenly, for the first time, Sansa felt she understood the queen with complete and awful clarity.  _Is this how you felt on your wedding day, your Grace? Is that why you spoke to me as you did? Is that why you did this?_

The congregation began to murmur and sway, making sounds of exit, but Sansa could not take her eyes from the queen. The queen glared back, proud and haughty and haunted in the rosy light of the sept, and her mouth tightened grimly as if to say:  _Now do you see?_

Yes, Sansa saw. She took it in with icy vividness that seemed to touch her very veins. Cersei must have once stood on a marriage altar like this, and she must have been just as disenchanted and horrified as Sansa felt today.  _Who was it you loved, Cersei?_   _Who did they take you away from?_

Oh, she ached. Would that she never wanted to make another woman learn the cruel lessons of life as Cersei had taught her this day—but Sansa knew, with ragged weariness, that you never could tell, and she watched numbly as the queen turned to leave the castle sept, trailing after Joffrey as he made his grand exit. No—you never knew what life would make of you, or what it might turn you into. And you never knew what a broken, shattered, furious heart might make you do.

Her wedding was over. It was done, and she was wed. Sansa’s entire body felt dizzy, light, and blackened as the charred remnants of a fire, as if she had come into the sept whole but would leave it only ash.

Yet she could not rid the look on the queen's face from her mind.

 

 

 

 

The wedding dinner that followed in the Small Hall was a study in minor agonies. Sansa was seated at the table of honor, staring out at the crowded hall behind a veil of unshed tears. Beside her, her husband slumped in the chair, drinking steadily and eating hardly at all. Sansa’s skin crawled with humiliation to think what a miserable pair they made.  _Does he hate me already?_  Despite everything, it was still automatic that Sansa wanted to be a good wife, although she was now beginning to understand exactly what that meant.

“My lord, would you eat?” she ventured anxiously, gesturing to the platters on the groaning table before them. A serving page hesitated at her elbow, waiting to spring to action, but Tyrion only grunted. Some wine splashed onto his velvet doublet as he waved his glass for more, but he did not seem to mind. “No thank you, my sweet wife. Drinking suits me just fine.”

The page finished serving Sansa’s husband and paused by her side. “And for you, my lady?”

“No thank you,” she made herself answer politely. Just looking at the food before her, the vegetables glazed in honey, the suckling pig with an apple in its mouth, the cooked goose with the feathers stuck back on, the sticky cakes piled high, made her stomach lurch.

No, the feast held no interest for her. Yet she had not looked on a single face outside of the dais since she and her lord husband had been seated there like some sort of festival entertainment. Now though, Sansa's husband’s dismissal had given her cause to stop trying to please him, which comforted her in some twisted way. So, taking care to look as if she was merely adjusting her face, Sansa dabbed her damp eyes with the hem of her sleeve and made her face a mask. Then she looked out at the masses of wedding-goers.

There was so many of them, people she half-recognized from court, some she had known and spoken to familiarly, and many others who had stood by when Joffrey had ordered her abuse. Her heart hardened as she watched them, talking and laughing and enjoying her wedding banquet. She had dreamed of her wedding before, filled with friends and people that she loved, but this might as well have been a funeral dinner to her.

Then she looked to her left, and everything stopped. Sansa couldn't breathe.

It was Margaery, seated at the royal table. The other girl looked beautiful in raspberry silk, two spots of color blooming high on her cheeks. She was leaning to talk to Joffrey at her side, chattering like a pretty bird, but when she sat back against her chair she fell still, far too still for a girl who was ordinarily all animation. For a moment she seemed to be the only still point in the moving, turning room.

Then as if she could sense Sansa’s gaze on her, Margaery suddenly glanced up. Their eyes met. Margaery stared, lips parting with what might have been shock or a desire to speak, until something dark and awful crossed her face. She turned away.

For a moment it was as if Sansa felt too much, her chest squeezing with agony like something sharp and painful had been dislodged there—and then she drew a shallow breath, and refused to let herself feel anything at all. She turned away and put a hand to her breast, fighting past the stunned, winded sensation.

Perhaps she would wake tomorrow to find this was all an awful dream. Perhaps she truly was hallucinating. But surely no nightmare could be worse than being looked at like that, as if she were no more to Margaery than a perfect stranger. 

 _No more of that_ , she told herself, and hardened herself again. 

The feast seemed to last forever. Her husband remained stony faced as toasts were given, giving only an occasional nod of his head as acknowledgment; Sansa hardly heard them. She didn’t know any of the people who wished health and long life to her and Tyrion, nor did she wish to. She knew that behind their smiles lurked only false intent; none of them were truly smiling. In her dreams, all of her wedding guests had smiled with genuine happiness. (She remembered dreaming of the toasts her father and mother and brothers might give at her wedding, but abruptly pushed the memory away. It hurt too much.)

The musicians began to play. Although Sansa liked to dance, she wished more than anything that she could remain in her seat. Of course she was to have no such luck. After taking a turn around the floor with Margaery—which Sansa could not watch, instead drinking heavily as if that could stop her from seeing the pretty smile on Margaery’s face—Joffrey swaggered up onto the dais and dragged Sansa out of her seat. “Your Grace,” she tried to demur, squirming slightly in his hot grasp, but Joffrey just snickered. His face was red with drink, and he whispered hot moist words in her ear.

“I could have you any time I wanted, all I have to do is snap my fingers to have you brought to my bed whenever I please. My uncle has to do my bidding. I’m the King, and he is only the Imp.” He laughed nastily, giving her waist a squeeze. It seemed cruel that such a monster could also be such a wonderful dancer. He swept them around the floor with grace. “And now you’re the Imp’s bitch.”

Sansa let her mind float free of her body, hearing what he said but not truly listening. Joff hardly seemed real to her any more, after everything he had done. Everything he did was brushed with a horrible unreality, even the way his fingers pressed into her like she was a piece of property. She hardened her face and didn’t smile, and finally he let her go.

Others turned Sansa around on the dance floor, including Garlan Tyrell. Her heart jumped when she recognized his face, and she tried not to look past him to Margaery seated at the royal table, a blur in dark pink. “You are a vision today, Lady Sansa,” he said, smiling at her as he led them in a slow circle, hand resting gently on her waist. Sansa had never thought much of him before; as far as Margaery’s brothers went, Loras had preoccupied her thoughts followed in time by Willas; but the way Garlan looked at her now was so kind, far kinder than anyone else today. “Thank you, my lord,” she said.

“But of course,” Garlan answered gallantly. His reddish-brown beard reminded her of Robb, and for a fleeting, tender moment she let herself imagine it was her own sweet brother who held her, leading her in a dance on her wedding day _._  “And I think that happiness would make you even more radiant. My lady wife is most concerned for you.”

“Lady Leonette is too kind. Tell her I am well.” They changed partners; when the dance brought them together again, Sansa hesitated. “The Lady Margaery…” she began, uncertain and nervous. A flicker of understanding crossed Garlan’s face, and Sansa was relieved.  _Oh, if only I had married Willas, then you could have been my family_. Instead she had Cersei Lannister for the cruelest of sisters-in-law, and a drunken dwarf for a husband.

Garlan only nodded. “You would speak to her?” he asked mildly and Sansa nodded without words, absurdly grateful for the lack of judgment on his face.

When she returned to the dais, her husband didn’t raise his bloodshot eyes to look at her and only continued to drink. He appeared to have slid into a semi-stupor. After a while, Sansa gave up trying to feel anything other than numb and drank as well, amusing herself darkly by keeping pace with Cersei Lannister whom she watched in her peripheral vision. At last Sansa sensed that the feast was coming to a close. She had been waiting for this moment since the evening began, but also dreaded it. She feared the bedding ceremony and all that it entailed with a cold heavy weight that sat in her stomach like a stone.

Then with a sudden shock, she saw Olenna Tyrell and Margaery approaching from their table. Sansa raised her heavy head, hair feeling like an impossible weight on her neck, but she could not catch the look on Margaery’s face. The older girl moved sideways, one step behind her grandmother, her face turned away like a darting evasive shadow. Olenna Tyrell stepped onto the wedding dais first, reaching across the banquet table to squeeze Sansa’s hands. Her wrinkled old face looked resigned and calm, the jade green cowl she wore smoothing her neutral expression.

“Well, dear girl, I’m sorry that this all had to turn out this way. Margaery always was stupidly attached to you.”

 _Fuck you, you old witch_ , Sansa thought with unexpected viciousness. She had to bite her lip to keep back her dark rage. Why did she feel that the old woman had anticipated this all along, and was nowhere near as sorry as she professed to be? “I’m happy you could attend, Lady Olenna,” she answered, in a sweet empty voice.

Sansa eagerly tracked the old woman’s movements as she stepped aside to reveal her granddaughter. And at last Margaery was  _there_ , nothing else mattered because she was standing there with her sweet eyes reddened around the edges, petal lips curved upwards in a smile. “Sansa,” she said, pink blooming in her cheeks, and Sansa was startled out of her grateful reverie to stare up at her lover’s face. Margaery said something that Sansa didn’t hear; she could tell by Margaery’s expression that the words must be of congratulations, but she saw only Margaery’s round red-rimmed eyes, how stunned the other girl looked underneath it all. Those eyes betrayed her words. Then Sansa’s body listened only to the brush of Margaery’s fingers over the sides of her face, the courteous kiss the older girl laid dangerously close to her mouth, echoing the beautiful ghosts of countless kisses that had come before. Sansa’s eyes burned as Margaery stepped back. All she wanted to do was pull Margaery down, press her lips fully against the other girl’s, and take comfort in the kiss of the girl she loved.  _It should have been you._

“Thank you, Lady Margaery,” she said at last. Margaery’s eyes flashed hot and icy blue, but all she said was, “Of course, my lady.”

She turned, following her grandmother away off the dais, and Sansa’s chest caved in as if she had just run the length of the Red Keep itself.  

 

 

Then it was time for the bedding ceremony, and everything that followed was a nightmare of sound, dread, and color.

After Margaery and her grandmother returned to their seats, Joffrey stood up and said… Sansa closed her eyes, shutting it all out as her new husband and now-nephew sparred with words. And at last she was summoned to follow her husband out of the hall, seeing everything and processing nothing. Somehow the bedding ceremony had been waived, and she was grateful.

But as horrible as it had been in that room with Joffrey and all those people, it was almost worse when she and Tyrion Lannister were alone: just Sansa and her new husband in this strange bedchamber somewhere in the Tower of the Hand. Now Sansa had nothing to hide behind but her own dread and insistent sense of how horribly wrong this all was.

Tyrion kicked the door closed and looked up at her. “Well Lady Sansa,” he drawled, “here we are.” Something bitter touched his face. “Let us do our duty.”

His eyes were almost clear as they met hers, and she realized with surprise that he was not so drunk as he had seemed.  _He is intelligent_ , she thought. He had put on a show back in the Small Hall, when he had argued with Joffrey and she had tried desperately not to hear or register what was going on.

He nodded toward the flagon of Arbor gold on the table. “Darling wife, would you be so kind?”

Sansa did as she was bid, mechanically handing him his cup. Then she turned away, hearing the bed creak as he seated himself there.  _Yes, the bed. Now_ _…_

Sansa knew what she was expected to do, but her fingers were numb with disbelief as she slowly disrobed with her back to her husband. Her fingers felt clumsy, fumbling, and as dulled with cold as if she’d been playing outside in the snow like when she was a child at Winterfell.  _You will lie with your husband and have his children_ , her mother had told her, promised her, when she was young. It had been like a fairy tale, a glorious and beautiful story.  _And they will grow up big and strong and tall, and oh, how you’ll love your husband and you will love each other_ _…_

All she could think of was Margaery, her hands and mouth and body, her warmth. She thought of that first time in Margaery’s bed, how she had been scared and shy and Margaery had not gone any further than Sansa had wanted to go, but held her until she was ready, much later, to continue.  _That’s what it was supposed to be,_ that’s _what it’s supposed to be like, and_ _…_ The thought was overwhelming, and she squeezed her eyes shut with a sudden spasm of pain, scarcely cutting off the squeak of grief that rose in her chest.

_How could this happen? How could this possibly happen?_

How could she have known that love and marriage did not go hand in hand? How could she have known, when no one had told her? How could she know that she would go to bed dozens of times with a beautiful girl, someone she thought she might even love, and yet that would not stop her from being forced to wed a complete stranger from the family that had destroyed her own? How could she know that the girl she might love would look at her on her wedding day with eyes full of pain, and yet that would somehow still feel to Sansa like a betrayal?

She dropped her final robe to the floor with cold finality. She turned around slowly to stand before Tyrion, shivering. She was a maiden, and not a maiden. Her skin felt tight, but she was not embarrassed of her nudity; being with Margaery had taught her that much. Carefully she turned her eyes from looking at the tapestry to look at the man who was now her husband.

Seated against the pillows, Tyrion Lannister stared at her. His face twisted in what almost looked like anger. “You’re beautiful,” he said at last, a little hoarsely. It was not her he was angry with, that much was clear. His expression was almost tortured and she felt an acute twinge of sympathy in some strange way as well as revulsion, and a sense of incredible distance.

 _But this is not for you. This—I’m not meant to be for you._  She gazed at him, eyes blazing and dry. She was a wolf, a Stark of Winterfell, and she would not cry. And she did not owe it to him to submit easily like some mewling child or fearful virgin, for she was neither. “My lord,” she said, not a scrap of emotion in her voice.

His face crumpled, and for a moment she thought again that he hated her. “I want you,” he said plainly, and something in Sansa shriveled to hear it. She could think of nothing to say and so she said nothing. Suddenly she felt far too exposed, and moved her hands to cover her nakedness, the juncture of her legs and her breasts. She did not want him, and she felt it in every inch of her body.

“I do, and I feel a monster for it.” He looked at her seriously. She shivered, and tried to cover more of herself with shrinking hands. “You’re only a child.”

 _No_ , Sansa almost said, but didn’t. She had stopped being a child the day her father died. She’d stopped being a child the day she entered Margaery Tyrell’s bed. And as Cersei Lannister had told her, on her wedding day she had truly become a woman.

If lying with her husband was what the world demanded of her, she could do it. She could do her duty. She no longer had any illusions about how this world worked. “I’m no child, my lord,” she said firmly; and a marked change ran over the Imp’s face, but she had not said it for him.

 _It would be better to just get it over with_ , she thought. Summoning up her courage, she stepped towards the bed and paused at its edge. In spite of herself, she was afraid. She had never been with a man, and she did not want to.

She took a deep breath and moved to sit next to her husband on the bed. Her body felt tight with waiting, every muscle tensed with dread of what was to come. Turned away, she heard the sounds of his disrobing, and she gritted her teeth and steeled herself. When she turned back he was undressed, and she could see his arousal. She had never seen a man naked before, only her brothers in the hot springs by Winterfell—but judging by that small sample for comparison, it seemed that even her husband’s manhood was as crooked as the rest of his body.

Tyrion looked at her, fixing her with those large mismatched eyes. “Sansa… I know I am malformed, small, and scarred. But in the dark, with the candles blown out, I am no worse than other men. In the dark, I am the Knight of Flowers. I could be… I could be good to you.”

Was he asking her approval? Was he hoping that Sansa would not only submit to him, but that she would also enjoy it? Suddenly something strange overcame her—a feeling of pity. She released a deep breath, and stared at him. She was no longer afraid.  _I don’t want to_ , she thought dully but strongly,  _but I will if I must. I have had so much worse_. 

But suddenly Tyrion turned his head away from her probing eyes. He seemed to struggle for words. “But I—I cannot take you until you are ready. Not like this. I can wait a little time, until you are more comfortable, until you trust me. I promise I will not touch you until you are ready.”

Why this sudden change of heart? In the wave of enormous relief that washed over Sansa, she found she did not care: she was only thankful for its arrival. It felt like a stay of execution, and she drew a full breath for the first time since she’d entered the room. Suddenly she thought of Margaery, and her desperate hope compelled her to be brave. “And what if, my lord, I never want you to touch me?”

His face seized bitterly. In her blaze of pain, it seemed, everyone she touched was similarly affected. “Well,” he said at last, and his face twisted in an ugly smile though he was clearly unhappy. “That’s why the gods made whores. For men like me.”

Perhaps it was her place to comfort him. She knew that she ought to. But in her relief Sansa had no thought but for this deliverance, the staying of her sentence. She retraced her steps to the chair where she had laid her gown, and donned her sleeping shift with something almost like lightness in her chest.

She got back into the bed, and Tyrion looked at her for a moment as if he were going to say something. But then he closed his mouth with an aborted sigh, and she looked away in relief and sank down onto the pillows.

 _He’s not Joffrey_ , she thought as she settled down to sleep on her side of the bridal bed. Her husband leaned over to blow out the beeswax candle that flickered on the nightstand, leaving the room in welcome darkness.  _He isn’t Joffrey, and he spared me_.

Her sleep, when it came, was mercifully dreamless.

 

 

 

For two painful days she waited, but there was no word from the only person from whom she wished to hear. Every moment without news felt like a moment in suspended animation, and Sansa wavered between despair, anger, and uncertainty.  _Why hasn’t Margaery written to me? Why hasn’t she come?_

Sansa's new life moved around her with a misty sheen of unreality. All of her maids but Shae had been replaced with Lannister women, but Sansa did not care for their company or anyone else's. With the exception of Tyrion, whom she visited at mealtimes and spoke to only haltingly (she truly did try to be courteous, but in his company nothing could draw more than the most perfunctory civilities from her lips), Shae was the only person she saw.

So it was her old handmaiden who came upon Sansa sitting utterly still in the window seat, staring out across the unclouded waters of Blackwater Bay; at the sound of footsteps Sansa turned quickly, unable to stop her eyes from lighting up. “Do you—” But her heart sank with disappointment to see that Shae came empty-handed. “Were you expecting something?” asked Shae, her accent sharper than usual.

Sansa folded her hands in her lap, trying not to telegraph her disappointment. “No… No, I…”

“If you want to see the Lady Margaery,” Shae said, perfectly clearly, “then you ought to write to her.”

Sansa turned her head in disbelief. “I—”

Shae stared back boldly, meeting Sansa eye for eye. It was Sansa who finally dropped her gaze, reddening with a mixture of embarrassment at her own transparency, and relief that Shae was both blunt and perceptive. “Yes,” she said, with sudden determination, "I will."

 

 

 

But the response that came the following day both shocked and disappointed her. Sansa’s heart sank to see the bold signature not of Margaery, but of  _Olenna_  Tyrell—nor was it even a summons for the private audience she’d hoped for, but rather an invitation to a formal lunch. It seemed she lived her life in between formal invitations to lunch.

Dully Sansa clutched the heavy paper in one hand and went to her lord husband’s study to ask his permission. 

“The Lady Margaery and her court? Yes, of course,” Tyrion Lannister said, handing the creamy parchment back to her with a gentle hand. “I know you two are very close.”

He was seated at his writing desk with a quill and an imposing stack of books at his elbow. For a moment Sansa was curious, wondering what those books might contain, before she remembered herself and dismissed the thought almost angrily. It was almost impossible to believe she had any right to be closer to this near-stranger than she had just a few days ago, despite that in the eyes of the gods they were now bound as one.

“And Sansa,” Tyrion Lannister added mildly, “you don’t need to ask my permission for social matters. You have your freedom to do as you wish, and see whoever you like.”

She stared at him for a moment, a bright sharp feeling of unreality in her head.  _Husband; this is my husband._  A twinge of gratitude struck her, which she resisted. She would not bend to him, never mind his seeming kindness; she might yield to him in body, but not in mind. So Sansa nodded tightly, dutifully, but said nothing. She turned silently on her heel and went out. 

She dressed carefully, eyeing the beautiful lavender silk dress that Margaery had commissioned for her. But in the end she chose a simple blue gown (red would have made too great a statement, and not the kind of statement Sansa wanted to make), and had Shae pull her hair back halfway so it cascaded loosely over her shoulders. Though Sansa’s hand hesitated over Margaery’s snowdrop necklace, secreted away in a corner of her jewelry case, after a moment she thought better of it and wore no jewels. 

 

 

 

She was met at the entrance to the Maidenvault by Loras Tyrell, who courteously offered his arm and escorted her down into the crowded great hall. As empty as she felt, Sansa managed a few sweet greetings for him, words she forgot as soon as they left her lips. She couldn’t bring herself to look at his face.  _He was right after all, wasn’t he?_   _Telling me not to get attached, not to care too deeply?_ Loras had been right about everything.

Entering the crowd, she didn’t glimpse Margaery until the older girl swept out from a side entrance, redolent of rose perfume and wearing a radiant smile. Sansa stiffened when Margaery took her hands, but Margaery’s grasp was as delicate as a stranger’s.

“Lady Sansa,” she said with bright gaiety, and turned her head away almost immediately. Sansa released Margaery’s hands with something cold touching her heart, and quietly followed the young queen-to-be to the table where they sat on opposite sides of Margaery’s grandmother. Despite the lively noise of the hall Sansa had eyes and ears only for one woman, but Margaery did not look at Sansa again.

“Lady Sansa, how is marriage treating you?” the Queen of Thorns demanded as soon Sansa sat down at her left, leaning over to pat Sansa’s arm with a hand as withered as an old crabapple. It was rather surreal how even though Sansa’s world had turned upside these past few days, the old woman remained exactly the same. The world itself might end and Sansa rather suspected the Queen of Thorns would just raise an eyebrow... but then again, it might be different if Olenna’s own family were involved. That was always seemed to be the deciding factor.

“It’s treating me very well, thank you,” Sansa replied by rote, her voice as colorless as milk. She fought the urge to glance sideways at the other girl across the table. “My lord husband is very kind.”

“Isn’t that wonderful to hear,” Olenna said crisply. She picked at the cheese appetizer on her plate, pursing her lips. “Well my dear, I  _am_  sorry that we weren’t able to make you a Tyrell; Willas was terribly sad to hear that he lost such a lovely wife. But you must look very fetching in crimson, I suppose. I imagine the color would look lovely on you for all that it would clash with your hair.”

Something dark like sticky anger filled Sansa’s throat, but she nodded wordlessly. It wasn't worth it to object. Involuntarily, she glanced up.

Across the table Margaery was staring at the two of them, and her smile was sickly sweet.

 

 

 

When the meal was over, Sansa moved with certainty that once would have surprised her. Like a seasoned hunter she cut through the swarm of rising courtiers to find the only one who mattered, the one for whom she had come. There was no longer any time for niceties. Sansa’s target stood directly opposite, speaking with just a bit too much animation to her circle of ladies, tossing her long hair over one shoulder with her back turned to Sansa.

Sansa stepped between Alla and Elinor without sparing either of them a glance.

“A word?” she said, low, moving close to place a hand on Margaery’s arm. Conversation around them came to a halt as sharply as cracking ice, but Sansa fixed her shoulders with hot defiance and met no one’s eyes. _Let them listen and whisper behind their hands._ She didn’t care.

But her face burned in the moments before Margaery at last turned to blink at her, eyes slightly widened. The queen-to-be’s expression was all soft innocence, but the way her rosebud mouth twisted belied her outward calm. “Certainly,” she said, just a beat too slowly, and sweet, resentful relief filled Sansa’s chest like a punctured dream.

Margaery lightly took her arm to lead her from the circle of people, and for one brief, beautiful moment it was as if nothing had changed. But as soon as they stepped into an airless passageway that branched from the main hall, the Tyrell girl’s hand fell away as if she did not want to touch Sansa. She began to walk so quickly that Sansa had to hasten to keep up, and when at last they reached a part of the corridor that split into rooms, Margaery led them into one seemingly at random and shut the door crisply behind them.

They had taken only a few steps into the sparsely furnished chamber when the older girl turned on her heel and stood perfectly still, facing Sansa. Margaery stared at her with a face like an accusation and, not knowing what else to do, Sansa stared back. She hid her shaking hands in the folds of her skirt.

“Well,” the older girl said at last. Her blue eyes were cold. “I suppose they’ve made a Lannister of you.”

The tone of her voice astonished Sansa. “Yes,” she answered. She heard her words come out clipped and icy, but inside she felt lightheaded, almost dizzy. What had she _done_ to make Margaery look at her like that, like she hated her? “They have.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Margaery said with a brittle smile, and rested one hand on the table that occupied the room.

“As am I,” Sansa cut back, bristling unexpectedly. Was this truly how Margaery was going to be, standing there looking as if she wanted to blame Sansa for something Sansa had known nothing about? She added pointedly, “I suppose I’ll never see Highgarden now, shall I? It’s a shame. I was so looking forward to it.”

For the first time she seemed to hit a nerve. Margaery winced, pushing a long, loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Sansa,” she said with precise, maddening calm, “my family and I had no idea about your wedding. We—it was a terrible shock to all of us.”

Sansa felt herself smile an awful smile. “Oh, it was a terrible shock to me as well. As you can imagine.”

Margaery took a controlled breath. Her expression was placating, as if she were speaking to a child, and seeing it woke something ugly in Sansa. “All we wanted was for you to be married to Willas. We wanted you to become a Tyrell, Sansa. You know that.”

Sansa's vision went black around the edges with rage—and she spoke before her mind caught up with her mouth, violently. “Oh yes—I know. But that didn't end very well for me, now did it? Here I am, powerless. Married into the family I most despise." She took a breath, licking her lips, and stared directly at Margaery. "And in case you didn’t realize, my husband is a dwarf related _by blood_ to the man who killed my father.”

The echo of her words lashed the air as crisply as a whip, and color rose in Margaery’s cheeks as if Sansa had slapped her. 

“These things are sometimes out of our hands,” Margaery said finally, averting her eyes. It was as if she was repeating a line someone had taught her. “But Sansa—”

“And why didn’t you come to see me,” Sansa interrupted, her voice harshly serrated with anger. It was both a question and an accusation. “After I was married. Three days, and you said nothing—you didn’t come see me, you didn’t write.”

Margaery hesitated. “My grandmother said it was for the best.”

 _Of course._ Sansa felt fury building higher in her chest, hot and almost animalistic, but before she could speak Margaery stepped closer. “Please, Sansa, I wasn’t lying to you.” Margaery’s voice remained even, but her cheeks had started to flush again. “We planned for you to marry Willas. We had no idea the Lannisters would—”

Why couldn’t Margaery see that Sansa truly didn’t care any more—at least not here, now, when it was just the two of them alone—about Lannisters, Tyrells, or any other noble house? It was done, Sansa was married, and so what else did she have to lose? Why couldn’t Margaery stop talking in circles about all of that and just _see_?

“You wanted me,” she said in a hard voice, gazing at Margaery, “for the same reason the Lannisters wanted me, and they won, so now what? Do you still want me, now that all chance of that is gone? Now that I can’t marry Willas?”

The older girl looked tormented. She reached for Sansa’s arm, eyes pleading. “Sansa, it’s not—”

“I can’t marry Willas!” Sansa repeated, her voice reaching a high pitch. She violently shook off Margaery’s tentative touch, backing away. She was almost shouting now, but she could not stop. “I can’t give you the North! I—”

“ _I never_ _said_ I wanted you to marry him!” Margaery cried, and it was as if something had suddenly broken in her. She stamped one foot, turned away, and then whipped back to stare at Sansa as if challenging her, eyes suddenly glittering with tears. “For my family I did, yes, of course! But _I_ —I—”

She let out a cry of frustration, hands clenching into fists at her sides. “Would Willas have been able to—could he ever look at you and feel—?”

Abruptly Margaery stopped, her eyes gone very wide, and bit back her words. Sansa felt a shock of anticipation in her chest and waited, heart pounding in exhilaration, for what Margaery might say next.

But the moment was gone. Margaery turned, something close to terror in her eyes, and went hastily to the window. Her chest heaved as she drew deep breaths, struggling to regain composure as she stared out with the fingertips of one hand pressed, shaking, to her lips; and Sansa felt desperation building in her like a tangible weight. If Margaery turned from her now, she would have nothing left.  _Nothing at all._

“I’m a maiden,” she burst out, the words coming out in one hot vicious rush. “Does that make you happy, Margaery? You’re still my only. The only one who’s ever fucked me.”

The silence that filled the room was dark and deafening.

“Sansa,” Margaery said slowly, turning from the window. Her blue eyes were glassy with disbelief. She took her hand away from her mouth, the fingers visibly trembling.

She had wanted to say something so awful that it would really hurt Margaery—and by the look on the other girl’s face Sansa knew that she had done it. She felt sick with satisfaction. “I thought that would be important to you,” she spat.

Margaery’s face went blank. She crossed the room quickly, and for a split second Sansa actually thought that Margaery was going to strike her. _Would I deserve it, for what I said?_ She recoiled, but the other girl surprised her by pulling her into a rough embrace. “ _Stop_ ,” Margaery breathed, voice harsh against Sansa’s hair, and Sansa could feel her shaking. “Stop it, Sansa, I’m _here_. I’m right here.”

She was so angry that at first she struggled against Margaery, trying to push the other girl away, but she was truly only struggling against herself. As Margaery wrapped both arms around her and held her close, she dissolved into hot tears and at last gave in to the maelstrom of emotions she'd been holding in since her wedding day. She shook with nearly uncontrollable sobs, and tightened her arms around Margaery as if she never wanted to let go. _At least the worst has happened, at least now I can be with her, until_ _…_

She pressed her forehead against Margaery’s, wrapping both hands around the smaller girl’s waist. “You don’t know,” she whispered, tears hot on her face, “what it cost me to trust you.”

Margaery half-turned, clumsy with emotion, and sat in the nearest chair. Sansa moved with her, falling gracelessly to her knees, not bothering to smooth the skirt of her gown. She rested her head against Margaery’s chest, where the other girl’s skin felt clammy and cool with perspiration; when Margaery bent over Sansa, chin tucked on top of Sansa’s head, Sansa could tell that she was crying as well. She rocked the two of them, smoothing shaking hands over Sansa’s hair, a maternal gesture that now seemed like false assurance of her ability to truly take care of things, to truly protect them.

She was soft again; she was the girl Sansa knew, no longer the cold, calm façade she had presented at first. She leaned back to take Sansa’s face in her hands, pressing kisses to Sansa’s cheeks and smoothing away the tears with her palms. “Sansa, I’m sorry, I _won’t_ leave you, I don’t care what Grandmother says—”

“Margaery…” She struggled to communicate what she felt. Staying here in the Red Keep, she was trapped, suffocating, imprisoned, and she didn’t know if there would ever be a way for her to get free. Margaery only held her tighter, as if that would help, but it was the last thing that truly could. Sansa didn’t know if Margaery could ever understand that.

She leaned back so that Margaery’s hands rested loosely on her waist, and gazed up at Margaery beseechingly. Margaery’s eyes met hers, wide and very blue. “Margaery, you have to help me, you have t-to—do something, I—”

 _Fix it, fix this,_ was what Sansa wanted to say. _Take it back, the wedding with Tyrion, everything. I fell in love with you, it was supposed to be you, and you and your family can do anything. Fix it. Make it all better._

But the other girl only held on, breathing unevenly and staring away, and said nothing. “Perhaps this… is for the best,” Margaery said in a faint, final voice, lifting her wet blue eyes to Sansa’s. Her face was pale and luminous with tears, slightly blurred around the edges. She looked almost dazed. “You didn’t really want to leave, to go far away to Highgarden, did you? Now you’ll be able to stay here. Close to me.”

Sansa pulled back. Her entire world seemed to go dull with shock. “With a husband. I have a husband, and soon you will have one too.” 

Margaery choked back a laugh, looking at Sansa in critical disbelief. “I was always to have a husband. And so, may I remind you, were you.”

She felt dizzy. “But—a Lannister. He’s a _Lannister_.”

Yet it wasn’t, she remembered suddenly, as if Margaery had never spoken to her about this before. A distant memory sprang to mind: a bath on a long-ago golden afternoon, Margaery speaking about her feelings on love and marriage. Margaery had told her these things before, but Sansa had not been listening. She had not wanted to hear them, and now it was too late.

Sansa stumbled back, somehow finding her balance and getting to her feet. She wanted to groan. How could she have shut her eyes so tightly? How could she have ignored the fact that, as women, she and Margaery would both eventually have to marry? _I’m as bad as Margaery,_ she thought in despair, _I’m as bad as she is, closing my eyes to what I know is true._ But while Margaery could afford to do such things, Sansa, as she had so bitterly learned, no longer had that luxury.

“Tyrion will be good to you,” Margaery said now, looking up at Sansa with studied calm. She placed her hands in her lap, straightening in her chair with sudden composure. “As you told me, he is kind. He is a good man, Sansa, and you have no reason to fear him.”

Sansa stared hard at her, shaken in the face of Margaery’s sudden pragmatism. There must have been some shadow of the girl who used to stand before Sansa with sweet and pliant affection in her blue eyes, but Sansa could not see it. That girl had given way to the Tyrell woman, determined to make the best of this situation.

“And Joffrey?” she said softly, gazing at the young queen-to-be.

Something ran over Margaery’s face, a hesitancy Sansa easily identified after months of learning Margaery’s every expression. _She’s holding something back, I know it_. Why wasn’t Margaery worried about Joffrey?

But Margaery took a breath and put on her smile, so transparent to Sansa now. “When I marry,” she said almost smoothly, “we’ll be sisters-in-law. We’ll be related, and I shall have the power to give you anything you could want. I can _help_ you. I can keep you safe, you see? It’ll all work out for the best. And we can still—we can still be together,” she whispered hotly, reaching out to clasp Sansa’s hands. “You see? It’s all for the best.”

Sansa drew back slightly, staring with widened eyes at the older girl’s expectant, insistent face. _No, you can’t give me anything I want, Margaery. You can’t give me back my family, my freedom, or my home. You can’t even fully give me yourself._ _And you can’t keep me safe; you cannot even keep_ yourself _safe, despite all you say, if you truly are going to marry Joffrey._

“Just wait,” Margaery said in a rushed whisper, as if she didn’t see the mingled hesitation and disbelief on Sansa’s face. “Just wait until Joffrey and I are married, and everything will be all right.”

Sansa shook her head slowly, almost unaware that she was doing it. _When you’re married._ Couldn’t Margaery see that any wedding to Joffrey Baratheon would be not a beginning, but an end? There was something Margaery wasn’t telling her, to have such confidence: Sansa knew it with sudden, suffocating certainty. And whatever it was that Margaery withheld, Margaery trusted it enough to assure Sansa of her safety. Something was wrong.

But why did Sansa long so _badly_ for the impossible protection of Margaery’s arms, when she had just brutally learned that Margaery’s promises were no true shield against the realities of the world? Why did she crave that perceived safety when she knew that safety did not truly exist? She looked at the beautiful girl before her, knowing that Margaery was speaking truthfully, for her, in some part of her. Sansa knew that if she ever wanted to be able to live wholly without Margaery, she needed to say no. It was so stupid to trust promises: hadn’t she just learned that?

But Sansa had never claimed to be smart about love. This was all she knew of it, from her limited experience—shutting your eyes to what hurt, holding on to what was true. Margaery was all she knew, and how could she possibly let that go? _How could I ever let her go?_ Margaery’s hands tightened on Sansa’s and Sansa closed her eyes, turning herself over to bitter, beautiful, absolute defeat. And she nodded. “All right,” she whispered, and Margaery let out a low cry of relief.

It was the sweetest, most awful kind of surrender, and the worst part was that she was doing it consciously.

Again, Sansa yielded.

 

 

 

But just as Sansa wanted to burrow under Margaery’s skin and learn all that she could, to get at the secret contained somewhere behind the other girl’s beating heart, Margaery was suddenly busier than ever, and an entire world of circumstances conspired to keep them apart. Wedding fittings, dowry fittings, gown fittings: Margaery’s life had become a whirlwind of activity, and it was all Sansa could do to keep up. Yet chasing Margaery was the only way Sansa could deny the irrefutable reality of her own married life, and so she kept at it unrelentingly.

Inside she was burning with feverish heat. The Red Keep felt warm, far too warm for her, and she longed for the cold—cool crisp air, the snap of winter in bright morning light; these things filled Sansa’s dreams, and taunted her when she woke to breathe only humid air. Here there was just one crucial heat that Sansa desired, but it was growing more and more difficult for her to consider even that her own.

Margaery’s head arched back against the stone wall of the passageway, her mouth opening in a soundless gasp as Sansa kissed a trail between her breasts and moved downwards with desperation that sprung from some dark, unnamable source. She chased the salt of Margaery’s sweat with her tongue, breathing in deeply through her nose as Margaery stiffened and sighed, fingers digging into the wall and head turning convulsively to one side. Moving under Sansa’s fingers the older girl released an abbreviated moan that prickled Sansa’s spine with recognition; she let out a hot sigh against Margaery’s skin, darkly proud of making Margaery articulate her desire. She’d always been able to make Margaery tell the truth, ultimately, even if it wasn’t with words.

“Sansa, I can’t—” Margaery had protested, laughter and warning in her voice as Sansa tugged her out of the dress fitting one week to the day after Sansa had been made Tyrion Lannister's wife. “Honestly, I—” But that hadn’t stopped her from following Sansa out into the back corridors of the Maidenvault, lacing her fingers through Sansa’s almost obediently.

“No,” Margaery said suddenly, sounding as drowsy with heat as someone surfacing from the bottom of the sea. She tugged at the roots of Sansa’s hair, winding her fingers in and pulling just as Sansa began to suck a bloom onto the exposed spot between her breasts. With a spasm of irritation, Sansa moved up to kiss Margaery’s salt-tinged throat instead, drawing a gasp out of her that made Sansa hot. “Don’t leave a mark,” Margaery warned, her blue eyes heavy-lidded and dark with lust.

Sansa raised her eyebrows and drew back to slip her hand under the surprisingly heavy fabric of Margaery’s bodice, fingers cupping the other girl’s soft breast and trailing over the nipple. _I need you_ , she thought with singularity, leaning in to take an open-mouthed kiss. Sunlight striped Margaery’s chest and waist as she arched under Sansa’s mouth, the bars of bright light falling from the tapered windows at the far end of the corridor. But then, leaning back after the kiss to admire the other girl with just a few fingers placed under Margaery’s chin, Sansa was suddenly acutely aware of their surroundings, their isolation. It was not a pleasant realization. How had they come to this, stealing clandestine moments like two thieves? Was this what their love had become? She swallowed back the sick feeling, licking her lips.

Margaery seemed unaffected, taking Sansa’s sudden withdrawal as a sign they were finished. “Silly girl,” she said lightly, pushing Sansa away with a gentle hand and gazing down to inspect the smooth, still-unmarked place between her breasts. She ran a few fingers over the spot, twisting her mouth playfully as she glanced up at Sansa with quick eyes. “You almost let everyone know you were there.”

“Good,” Sansa said, frowning deeply, but Margaery pretended not to hear it.

It was so hard to be with Margaery now, when every time they met only partially satisfied Sansa’s deep, unnamable craving for her. Sansa wanted to spend every night with Margaery, to devour her until Sansa knew every secret that the older girl kept, to wear her down to the bone until Margaery spoke nothing but the truth. Sansa knew that she could do it, if only she had the time—but there was no longer any time.

For every night, she had to return to sleep alongside her husband in the marriage bed they shared in a mutual flush of mortification. She saw Tyrion every day, counting down the minutes spent in his presence, always immeasurably relieved when their time together was done. Her husband’s attempts at kindness hurt more than if he was cruel—Sansa would’ve preferred that he speak to her sharply, for then she would not feel so guilty for hating him. Even worse, she pitied him for what he had already suffered. She hated her husband, and she pitied him. His attempts at gentleness, to amend the pain she had experienced at his family’s hands only made her feelings more confusing.

But she loved another, and she could not trust him—not with his family being who they were. What could she give him besides her kindness? And what right did he have to that, or to any part of her, truly?

“I have a husband,” she said aloud to remind herself, tasting the words. Long ago that had meant everything to her. She thought she’d known what it meant to be a dutiful wife. _If I wish to secure my position with the Lannisters, I must give Tyrion a child_. And the thought made her retch, bending over her chamber pot as violently as if she truly did have phantom morning sickness.

It had once been so easy to define the roles she’d expected to play in life. Wife. Mother. Nowhere in her imaginings had been the role of thwarted lover to the ascending queen—nor had she anticipated marrying into the family of the monster who killed her own father. Sansa put her head on her knees to breathe deeply, pressing her hands against the cold flagstones of her bedroom floor, stomach roiling with nausea and grief.

“Perhaps…” she said aloud, head aching with spastic thoughts. Perhaps in another time, under different circumstances, she might have been able to love her husband. Then, she knew, she might have turned her nose up at Tyrion due to his deformity, but learned to love him because he was kind. Whereas now she knew the true reason to fear him—his family. It was the same reason she feared to trust Margaery—Margaery’s family, and the safety it represented for the other girl. Margaery might swear Sansa promises up and down, but she could never know what it meant for Sansa to have no safety net at all. She could never know, and she would never understand.

But Sansa had no family left in King's Landing. She had only herself, and the shame of a love that made her forget all else.

 

 

 

Somehow the days elapsed, and as a sleepwalker might pass time, so did Sansa. Ten days after her humiliation, her wedding—and she had seen Margaery just four times, which once would have been their usual number of rendezvouses in as many days. Their few moments together had been strange, needy meetings each time. After speaking so emotionally that first time after Sansa’s wedding, Margaery wore an impenetrable calm whenever they met; though she submitted hungrily and easily to Sansa’s kisses, she seemed to evade all Sansa’s further requests to be alone.

It was miserable living this way, pinning her every hope on the next private moment Margaery would grant her, but it was better than the alternative. It was better than having nothing to cling to, no lover and no hope—not even the shred of the idea that Sansa was waiting for something to deliver her from the stasis in which she’d found herself, this waking dream state and the marriage she could hardly believe was real, even as she woke every day to her own stifled nightmare.

 

 

 

Could there be anything stranger than being told that you have changed, that you are different, when you cannot feel any difference at all? When you are forced to change by circumstances beyond your own control, but long with every fiber of your being to remain the same?

How easy it was for Sansa to forget that she was married now, that she belonged to the Imp, that she was Sansa _Lannister_ , when he made her feel nothing but dull sick discomfort whenever she was with him. It was so easy to forget when she still ached for Margaery at every moment and when Margaery responded as she ever had, returning Sansa’s looks with uncanny intuition and heat. The only difference was that Margaery was much less available now, tied up in the heightened planning for her wedding. She kept Sansa at her side, but Sansa winced to hear the comments the young queen-to-be directed at her cousins, teasing that she and Sansa were to be true good-sisters soon enough. _How can she be so cavalier?_

The Tyrell ladies had even the gall to ask Sansa coy questions about her new husband, and it drove Sansa nearly out of her mind to answer as lightly as if nothing had changed. Well, in some ways nothing had—she was still madly in love with the Rose of Highgarden, and Sansa rather thought they all knew it. But if that was the case, then the ladies could have at least been kinder with their silly small talk. “I hear that the Imp is a wonderful lover,” Elinor said playfully to Sansa one day, and Sansa grew so inwardly furious that it took all she had to sit there smiling serenely. “Is there any truth to the rumors, my lady Lannister?”

Sansa felt herself turning red, but she knew it would pass for offended modesty. “I couldn’t say,” she heard herself say coyly, and her stomach seized with anger to hear how appreciatively the ladies laughed.

Sansa didn’t have the heart or patience for it. She sat in the court circles with her mouth tense, eyes focused on Margaery’s every movement. It might have been the very earliest stages of their affair when Sansa had been dizzy with infatuation and confusion, and every glance from the young queen-to-be had meant volumes. It seemed that Margaery hardly belonged to her at all, that she was slipping from Sansa’s fingertips, and it made Sansa inwardly wild. How could she lose Margaery when she’d barely laid claim to her? How could she bear it, when Margaery was the only thing that kept her sane in this living hell of the Red Keep?

 

 

 

At last Sansa caught Margaery in court one day, rising to her feet and taking her lover firmly by the elbow. Paused in motion—she seemed always to be moving, unfixed, stopping only en route to some other end—Margaery looked at Sansa with soft blue eyes, lips parted innocently as if to ask what Sansa wanted. As if there could ever be any question of that.

It made her shiver to be the focus of all the older girl’s attention, even after everything—that was how long it had been since they’d spoken intimately. “I would speak with you, Lady Margaery,” Sansa said in a voice that was perfectly light, angling their bodies towards the door.

Margaery opened her mouth to reply, but Sansa was not finished. “Let me stay with you tonight,” she added, low, moving one hand to Margaery’s wrist.

Their fingers brushed. Margaery delicately raised an eyebrow, glancing at the ladies sitting behind them, and Sansa ached as the older girl shifted out of her grasp. “Lady Sansa,” she said, “I…”

“ _Please_ ,” Sansa said in a half-whisper, the word swelling painfully in her throat.

Beneath Margaery’s smile her face was all hesitation, and for a moment Sansa truly expected to be denied. “Dine with us tonight,” the Tyrell girl acquiesced at last, and Sansa’s heart leapt as the older girl added in a half-voice, “and I will take you after.”

So it was hours later, after a dinner Sansa hardly registered nor would later be able to recall, that the young queen-to-be finally allowed Sansa to take her hand. She led Sansa into the winding passageways of the Maidenvault with a calmness that contrasted starkly with the raging feelings Sansa held inside. Was this the manner in which any lover wished to be taken—secretively, with a smiling veneer that tasted of shame? Resentment and grief swelled in Sansa’s throat, choking her with every hurrying step they took.

“Sansa, what _is_ it?” Margaery asked almost plaintively as soon as her bedchamber door shut behind them. But her face was too sweet, her question too placid, and Sansa felt her skin prickling with anger, something howling unbidden in her ears.

“How can you ask me that,” she said hoarsely, turning to make sure the door was locked. She pounded the flat of her hand against the wooden door for emphasis. “How can you, when I—”

She turned and saw Margaery’s face, and stopped short. Margaery’s smile—if it could even be called that—was nothing but thinly veiled recognition and pain, all quivering behind the delicate twist of her mouth.  Abruptly Sansa felt her anger drain away like bad blood after a leeching, and her head ached with the realization. Margaery was no better off than she was. She could meet this with antagonism or she could give up, and give in. _Just the same as I always do._

And so her throat ached with tears as she moved forward, turning her head down instead of speaking, nosing for Margaery’s hands. She felt pathetic asking for affection this way, humiliated that she had to beg her lover for entrance to the bed they’d shared so freely before—but Margaery sighed, closing those eyes full of awful self-recrimination, and sighed more deeply as she relaxed into Sansa’s embrace. _It was worth it_ , Sansa thought blurrily when Margaery leaned in and tenderly kissed her like an apology; and there was no more talking after that.

They began to make love, but Sansa found she didn’t want Margaery’s hands on her so much as she wanted Margaery’s arms around her. Though she’d meant to speak, demanding answers to questions too long gone unsaid, she drifted to sleep at Margaery’s side, lulled by the familiar rosewater scent of the older girl’s body and comforting heavy warmth of Margaery’s long brown hair. She slept with the dreamless ease that had eluded her for a very long time.

In the early morning stillness Sansa drifted awake, her slumbering calm changing into something strangely close to panic. “Margaery,” she whispered, her voice sharp in the hush of the room. The bedchamber was grey and silent in the pre-dawn light; they might have been the only ones in the Red Keep, for all its funereal calm.

The older girl murmured, still lost in sleep. “Margaery,” Sansa repeated, reaching to pour a cup of water from the silver pitcher on the nightstand. Nudging Margaery’s shoulder, she gently traced the fingers of her other hand along Margaery’s cheekbone with brutal tenderness, gazing at the face that was so beautiful in its soft familiarity. How often had she watched Margaery like this, never understanding how limited their time together truly was? And now it was to be like this, stolen mornings on borrowed time… Sansa treasured the image even as she took it in, something beautiful and terrible squeezing her heart.

At last Margaery opened her eyes, squinting at Sansa in the pale, lonely light. “It’s so early,” she mumbled, putting a hand over her face, but took the cup from Sansa and drank with one elbow crooked against the bed. Watching her, Sansa suddenly couldn’t resist leaning down to fiercely kiss Margaery on her open mouth, water meeting between their lips. “Mm,” she heard Margaery say, before kissing Sansa back with easy sweetness that made Sansa go warm and soft everywhere. Aching with possession, she put one hand on Margaery’s breast and leaned deeper into the kiss, arching hard against the other girl’s body.

Margaery was nude under the covers, while Sansa retained her sleeping shift; suddenly hungry, ravenous, Sansa tugged down the blanket and licked her way down to Margaery’s collarbone, sinking her teeth into the satiny ridges of hard bone. At that Margaery let out a squeak of pain and caught her breath with a tiny groan before pushing Sansa’s head away.

“Gods, Sansa, I’ve only just woken up,” she complained laughingly, setting the cup back on the nightstand, “and you’re mauling me like some animal.” But she wound her fingers in Sansa’s hair to soften the words, drawing Sansa close to lay her head down on the older girl’s breast. They rested that way, Margaery’s bare skin warm against Sansa’s cheek, until Sansa had begun to doze off again…

“I suppose you should go back to your husband,” Margaery said out of nowhere. When Sansa tilted her neck back to gaze at Margaery in astonishment, the older girl wore a mild smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “He might be wondering where you are.”

Sansa was suddenly fully awake. “He knows where I am,” she said shortly, rising up onto her elbows. It was true. When she told Tyrion where she planned to spend the night, he hadn’t objected; in fact, he’d looked almost relieved. Surely her husband had his own reasons for wanting a night’s privacy, but Sansa had no desire to understand them—and she _didn’t_ want to discuss him, especially not here. In Margaery’s bed, Sansa wanted only to pretend that her wedding had never happened, to deny that anything outside this room even existed; but Margaery was as pragmatic as ever, lying there and gazing at Sansa with those clear, smothering blue eyes.

“Well,” the young queen-to-be pointed out calmly, “you _are_ his wife now. Some would say you owe him your time.”

Sansa dug her nails savagely into the flesh of her own thigh and bit her lip. The pain focused her, distracted her from the wildness struggling in her head. “But I don’t _want_ to be his wife. I want to be yours.”

And then she froze. _How easy it was to say it._ There it was, the childish, impossible truth she’d been holding onto for so long. Sansa felt weak: though she’d expected she might cry to admit it, she felt almost nothing at all. But Margaery only blinked at her with those exquisite eyes, unmoved. “And you are,” she said with tranquil sweetness, leaning in to kiss the side of Sansa’s neck.

She pulled away from the gentle touch, almost snarling. She was suddenly embarrassed by her unexpected, artless confession, and humiliated by Margaery’s indulgent response. “No—I’m not your wife. Not truly.”

“Sansa, are you being serious?” The older girl’s voice was light and playful, but there was a note of alarm behind it. She stared at Sansa until Sansa could no longer look back.

“I wish I could marry you,” she mumbled again, dropping her eyes. She blunted the childish words by nudging her nose against Margaery’s skin, and Margaery reached down to tenderly stroke the side of her face.

“Oh, Sansa, darling. Marriage is a reality of this world; it’s how things have always been. Would that you could have married Willas.” The older girl’s voice was soft. “He would have made you happy.”

“But he still wasn’t you.”

Margaery laughed, but it sounded slightly hollow. “Certainly not, but he’s a Tyrell.” She paused. “Sansa, you may not have been able to marry Willas, but you and I _will_ be family soon. Through the Lannister side, not Tyrell, but—it’s good enough. And you know that we Tyrells always take care of our own.”

Sansa said nothing and Margaery went on, speaking in a delicate, careful way. “I know you are not happy with your husband, Sansa, but give it time and perhaps warmer feelings will grow. And you know that marriage is not about love.”

“It’s not about love,” Sansa repeated throatily. 

“No, my darling, it isn’t. And having been married once already, I should say I’m a bit of an authority.”

Sansa lifted her head. “But what about us?”

There were no words for the expression that passed over Margaery’s face, before her face went completely blank. “I beg your pardon?”

“You and me,” Sansa said simply. She could feel her heart pounding in her ears but she was calm, not afraid as she’d anticipated. Her spine felt locked into place as she gazed down at the other girl. “What you and I have. Is it love?”

Margaery looked small lying back against the pillows, lips curled into a painful, teasing shape. She opened her little mouth and closed it, turning her head to the side, and pulled her hair distractedly through her fingers. “Love?” she said at last, with a half-note of a laugh. “Gods, look where that got Loras.” She paused. “ _Love_ … Oh, Sansa. Love is not what you want.”

It hurt far more than Sansa could have imagined, hearing Margaery say that. Suddenly she couldn’t bear to look at Margaery for even a second longer. With a muffled noise, she sat up and moved hastily to the edge of the bed. She clumsily jammed her elbows onto her knees, cradling her head in both hands as she struggled not to sob like something had broken in her.

“Sansa?” the older girl said in a tiny voice behind her, and Sansa felt Margaery’s hands stroking down her shoulders and arms. Sansa bit her lip so hard it almost bled, and still it didn’t stem the tears that filled her eyes. “Margaery,” she choked out; behind her she sensed Margaery leaning in, brushing the hair from the side of her neck to press kisses there in anxious, apologetic movements.

“Sansa, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you, I—”

Sansa let her head fall to her chest. “Margaery, I _know_ you care for me,” she said wearily. It humiliated her to beg like this, to beg her lover to admit feelings for her, but what else she could _do_? Sansa had learned to swallow her own pride, and now she desperately needed Margaery to do the same, to put in words that she had given something of herself to Sansa, something that couldn’t be easily recovered. She turned to stare at the other girl, eyes burning.

“But I see you _every_ _day_ , Margaery, and I still miss you. I’ve given you all that I am, all that I have… But what have you given me in return? You’re all I have left, and yet—” She took a deep breath, so sharp that she almost cried out. “You won’t admit that I mean anything to you at all.”

Margaery’s face was frozen in a mask of shock. Sansa forced herself to go on although her voice wavered almost to the point of breaking. “Do you know how that makes me feel?” she whispered. “It makes me feel like I have nothing. Like I have no one.”

Margaery slowly moved to sit next to Sansa on the edge of the bed, staring at her in total seriousness. Sansa’s skin prickled as she took in the sight of her lover seated there totally nude, her lovely body all openness and vulnerability. Swallowing hard, Margaery reached for Sansa’s hand, but suddenly withdrew it, looking as if she was about to faint.

“Everyone is telling me it’s a bad idea,” the older girl began, her voice shaking. She pressed a hand to her chest and all at once her face was alive with emotion, a dozen different expressions warring across it. “They say I’m stupid, thoughtless, selfish, that I—” Margaery paused, fixing Sansa with a defiant stare, and Sansa wondered not for the first time why people smiled when they were unhappy. Margaery’s pink mouth trembled. “Grandmother says I’m acting like an idiot, compromising everything we’ve worked for. And Loras is worried about _you_.” The older girl heaved a tiny sob of a laugh. “He says you deserve better, that I don’t know how to love anyone. It’s not true—it _isn’t_. But, Sansa—”

She broke off abruptly, eyes pleading, wide, and slightly wild with her confession. Something had dropped out of the bottom of Sansa’s stomach to hear those words, and for a moment she could only stare at Margaery. Her head was reeling. “Say it,” she said at last, when she finally remembered how to speak, “and I’ll forgive you. Say that you love me. If you really do.”

Margaery looked like she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. “Oh, _Sansa._ You know I do."

It was as if Sansa had forgotten how to breathe. She couldn’t look away, she had to memorize this moment and hold it forever in her mind: the exact way Margaery’s eyelashes trembled, the pale jumping arch of her throat, the tender, questioning blue of Margaery’s gaze as she looked at Sansa; the animal scent of her fear, and the human confession of her love. Then Sansa closed her eyes, and was dizzy. The room seemed to spin for a moment beneath her feet.

“I love you,” Margaery said hoarsely, and Sansa opened her eyes, hardly daring to hear it. Margaery reached out, gently cupping Sansa’s face. “I _love_ you. I love you so much, it— ”

She leaned over and kissed Sansa with an animal hunger that cut to the bone, and Sansa could taste everything Margaery was saying now, everything she had previously left unsaid. They moved together, and for a moment it was all that Sansa had ever needed, had ever wanted, until—

She pulled back. Margaery was panting, hands still fisted in Sansa’s clothing, rough with emotions no longer repressed. “Are you ashamed?” Sansa demanded, lips wet and scraped raw from Margaery’s teeth, and the other girl blinked in confusion that was almost childish. Trails of Sansa’s saliva pooled on her lower lip; Sansa wanted to lean forward and lick them away. “Are you ashamed,” she said again, “of loving me.”

Margaery’s lips parted in shock. “ _Ashamed_? No—no, I…”

“So why couldn’t you tell me?” Sansa said fiercely. “Why didn’t you?”

Margaery shut her eyes as if it pained her, as if the answer were obvious. “Sansa, please. Please.”

Sansa shook her hands roughly. “Tell me!”

“Because I was scared!” Margaery cried, eyes snapping open. “Because I’m terrified.” Her voice shrank to a rough shadow of itself, and she shook her head in tiny movements, staring at Sansa with a pleading, reproachful expression. “I love you so much it terrifies me.”

There was nothing but silence between them. Finally Sansa lifted a hand to cup the side of Margaery’s face, unspeaking, and Margaery let out a smoky relieved sigh, as though her throat burned with what she had to say.

“Sansa,” she began slowly, lifting a hand to place over Sansa’s. “I once promised you that Cersei Lannister would never make you do anything against your will. Do you remember that?” The young queen-to-be took a shallow breath, looking exhausted. “But I failed. You had to marry the Imp, and I failed you.”

There were soft blue bruises under Margaery’s eyes, as if she had not been sleeping enough, as if her worry had beaten physical marks into her skin. Sansa wanted to smooth the pads of her thumbs over those blue splotches and kiss them away, but first she had to hear what Margaery had to say.

“I can’t bear the thought of failing you again. I’m scared I can’t be everything you need me to be… I need to be strong, for both of us, but it’s hard; it’s so _hard_ , Sansa. All I want to do is keep you safe, and—I can’t. I couldn’t do it.”

Margaery was shaking her head again, in convulsive little movements. “I’ve never felt this way before. I always thought I could stop, just stop when it became inconvenient, or—” She paused when she saw the look on Sansa’s face, letting out an aggravated sigh. “Oh Sansa, you know I don’t mean it like that! You know that it’s not entirely up to me who I love, who…” Margaery’s words died away as she stared at Sansa, and she seemed to be sinking into acceptance. “I just thought that if I said it,” the older girl said slowly, “then it would make it true.”

Sansa couldn’t breathe. “Margaery, this _is_ true. It always was true.”

Margaery was still for a long moment, unblinking, before her face suddenly crumpled. She pressed her hands over her eyes and cried silently, shoulders curved in and shaking violently. Profoundly shaken, Sansa could only watch, knowing somehow that she could not touch Margaery now, that this had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the older girl, something being forged or broken inside her. When at last Margaery stopped crying, she moved into a sitting position in the center of the bed, tugging the bedclothes tightly around her unclothed body and still breathing unevenly.

And without hesitation Sansa moved close, leaning in to grasp the older girl by the arms. “Do you love me,” she said, repeating herself hungrily. Perhaps she ought to be more gentle, but she felt untamed.

“I love you,” Margaery answered obediently, so vulnerable huddled in the blankets, “more than I’m supposed to, or I should.”

Sansa gave her a little shake of the shoulders, not entirely gently. “I’m not asking about ‘supposed to.’ Do you love me?”

“More than anything,” Margaery admitted at last in a whisper, and then succumbed again to another sob, pressing a shaking hand to her face.

Feeling cold, beautiful, desperate triumph, Sansa bent down and kissed away the tears that finally shivered and fell from the corners of Margaery’s eyes, wrapping an arm around Margaery’s waist to hold her close. “Shh,” she breathed, the salt of Margaery’s tears stinging her lips. “I’m right here.”

“Oh, but Sansa,” Margaery said softly, leaning into her. “I’m scared. I really am.”

Sansa sat back to look at her. On Margaery’s face was an expression that she had never before worn, but that Sansa herself had felt a thousand times. “So am I,” she said, and Margaery closed her eyes slowly in resignation and acknowledgment. She laid her head against Sansa’s chest and Sansa wordlessly supported her.

She suddenly recalled a memory of when she was a child, playing with her sister. She and Arya had quarreled; she’d pulled Arya’s hair and Arya had backhanded her, leaving Sansa with a bruised eye. Sansa cried and pouted, winning everyone’s sympathy—but even though she was right (she _was_ the one who’d gotten hurt, wasn’t she?) she and Arya hadn’t spoken for a month. Sansa was left feeling hollow and lonely; and in the end, it hadn’t mattered that she was right. They had both been worse off, ultimately.

Somehow she felt the same now, having wrested the truth from Margaery after all this time. Yet wasn’t this was what she had wanted—to have all of Margaery, and also to know the truth? Now that Sansa had it, Margaery warm and gulping back her tears beneath Sansa’s hands, pliant and open the way Sansa had always wanted, it was bittersweet. Sansa’s elation at being right quickly ebbed into aching, indelible sadness—for Margaery had only been trying to protect her by hiding the truth. All that Margaery had done _not_ to admit that she loved Sansa proved how much she truly did.

She stroked the hair away from Margaery’s face, waiting for the older girl’s breathing to even out. She felt shaken, guilty, and relieved. A strange reversal of roles, to be sure—but a natural one.

“I just didn’t want to tell you,” Margaery whispered at last, pressing one hand to her temple. “I had to be strong. Telling you would have made me weak… made us weaker.”

“You can’t do that,” Sansa told her bluntly. “You can’t love someone like that.” _Because it wasn’t fair to either of us. I doubted you for so long, and it must have hurt you so deeply to hold back that way_ _…_

Margaery laughed hoarsely. “How do you know that? Have you ever loved anyone before this?”

 _I ought to ask you the same._ “I know enough,” Sansa said sharply, and Margaery’s face filled with remorse. She laced her fingers through Sansa’s, which Sansa knew to take as an apology. “I know you. And that’s enough.”

“I just never should have—” Margaery shook her head, all uncertainty. “I shouldn’t have started this. Or I shouldn’t have told you the truth.”

“Don’t say that,” Sansa said strongly, and Margaery nodded, gazing unwaveringly at her.

How strange it was to remember the sunny, laughing, open-mouthed girl Sansa had fallen in love with all those months ago. Picturing that girl and contrasting her with the trembling, wary lover before Sansa now felt like calling up a ghost. That was not Margaery any more—perhaps that would never be Margaery again; perhaps she, too, had been irreversibly changed by what they had done. Sansa knew that in some way they were in this together, bound by the way they’d pushed each other down the staircase of reckless love heedless of skinned knees and broken bones, holding onto one another like the only buoyant objects in a stormy and violent sea. Yes, Margaery had started it, but Sansa knew she had never intended things to go this far. Margaery had not wanted to lose control, but Sansa had made her. Sansa had loved too truly, too deeply, until Margaery had no choice but to do the same.

She wondered suddenly if Margaery would have loved her had they met before. _Before it all, before King’s Landing and_ … No, she understood suddenly. There might have been the initial flirtation, the infatuation amid sunlit gardens, perhaps a brief idyll in Margaery’s bed before the shine went off and Margaery set Sansa aside like a discarded toy. Somehow it didn’t hurt Sansa to admit that this was probably Margaery’s plan all along.

For if things had gone the way Margaery intended it would not have ended up this way, with Margaery looking at Sansa with eyes that were a world of self-recrimination and helpless love, as if she wanted to protect Sansa and crawl into her arms to disappear there all at once. If Sansa had not been broken—if Margaery had been able to resist the allure of a girl so broken that she was desperate for love, it would have been different. Margaery could not have loved that previous Sansa without true volition or understanding why, the way she clearly felt about the woman Sansa was now.

And knowing she could never have had Margaery without the suffering that came first—Sansa didn’t know what she would’ve chosen, if she had somehow been granted a choice. To stay that longing, innocent girl from before, without ever knowing real love? Or to feel the way she felt toward Margaery—and know that _Margaery felt the same way_ —but only after losing everything that had once provided the foundation of her world, the stable ground beneath her feet?

 _How can you even think that?_ cried a voice in her head. _Your father is gone, and you’re genuinely debating if you would give up this love to have him back?_

But she truly didn’t know. Her father was gone. Nothing could ever bring him back. And all Sansa was certain of was that she loved the girl in her arms more than she’d ever loved anyone, anything, in the entire world.

It was almost too much to think about.

“Gods, look at us,” Sansa said with a shaky laugh. “You’d think neither of us had ever discussed our feelings before.” She lifted Margaery’s limp hand and pressed her mouth to the knuckles, kissing them with soft measured force, before gently pulling Margaery into a sitting position; Margaery shuddered and went still against Sansa’s chest, tucking her head under Sansa’s chin. Her long brown hair tickled the exposed diamond of Sansa’s clavicle and Sansa smoothed one hand over it, suddenly feeling like a mother, a protector, in some way.

“I love you,” she murmured into Margaery’s warm hair, and Margaery shifted, repeating the words with such trusting defeat that Sansa’s heart ached.

 _She is all I have,_ Sansa thought fiercely, wearily, with the familiar and untaught terror she thought might never leave her. _But I am all she has too—in a way. In a way._

 

 

 

She returned to her chambers as if in a daze, like a sleepwalker moving through the mazeways of the Red Keep. Her lord husband was not there when she came in, so Sansa removed her clothes, draped them over the chair, and went straight to bed. She wrapped the heavy covers around her as if they could be protection from the deep melancholy that had overcome her, and fell asleep almost instantly.

Her dreams were chaotic and consuming. She dreamed vivid scenes, loud sounds, and emotions that escaped through her fingers like water through a sieve. Sansa was dizzy with the words Margaery had spoken at last, full of them, so full that she felt almost sick. _I love you. I love you. I love you._ They echoed in her head like a litany, a promise, or something graven on a tomb. Margaery had finally said those words, _finally_ , and it changed everything. And it changed nothing.

_I love you. I love you much that it terrifies me._

Sansa whimpered, but even in her dreams those words would not leave her in peace.

When she awoke her body was drenched in sweat. The room was full of hazy half-light, and she had no sense or idea of time. It could have been the dead of night, golden twilight, or bright midday for all she knew. Slowly she rose and dressed, moving out into the next room to find someone to orient her.

Her husband was seated at the table in the solar, an awful look on his face.

Tyrion rose, and the way he looked at her was as if he had broken something very small and helpless and was full of regret that he could never put it back together again. He looked at Sansa with untold guilt in his mismatched eyes, and she thought with a sudden chill that she had never seen a look like that on a man’s face before.

“Sansa,” he began, and suddenly she knew what he was going to say even before he said it. Every part of her body seemed to turn to ice, and she put a shaking hand to her mouth.

At first the words he spoke made no sense. They fell from his lips like paper curling into charred ash, furred gray ashes floating on a frozen wind.

_Your mother—your brother—_

Then suddenly his words assembled and rushed over her like a crashing wave. And she could not longer hear him, because there was a vicious ringing in her ears that would not cease. Maybe she screamed. She wasn’t sure, but there was a horrible sound in the room, like an icy wind wailing through the eaves. Was it her? Could it—

She put her other hand to her mouth, and staggered for a step, and fell. It felt like she would never stop falling. Her world caved in.

Then there was nothing but cold and welcoming darkness.

  

 

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Nabokov's _Lolita_.
> 
> So it's been over a year since I updated. How about that. This was a tough chapter to write because there were a lot of huge events and big, emotionally fraught scenes. I published [an author's note](http://roseroadkingsroad.tumblr.com/post/102791444894/authors-note-chapter-6) over at my blog, discussing writing speed, reader responses, plans for this story, and more.
> 
> I'm also trying to give myself a new comment policy, which is to respond in a timely manner. Comments are always, always appreciated and treasured! You can find my latest mix for this story here ([x](http://8tracks.com/heart-nouveau/just-a-game)).


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